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SOUTH AMERICAN 
PROBLEMS 



SOUTH AMERICAN 
PROBLEMS 



BY 

v/ 

ROBERT E. SPEER 



NEW YORK 

STUDENT VOLUNTEER MOVEMENT 
FOR FOREIGN MISSIONS 

1912 






.5 7 



Q/crj^ 



Copyright, 1912, by 

STUDENT VOLUNTEER MOVEMENT 

FOR FOREIGN MISSIONS 

All rights reserved 



GCU312416 



PREFACE 

We call the South American people a Latin peo- 
ple. In part they are. The foreign blood that is 
in them is for the most part Latin blood. The upper 
class is dominantly and sometimes purely of Latin 
blood. But a great proportion of South Amer- 
ican blood is not Latin but Indian. Nevertheless, 
the charm of the Latin inheritance is over the whole 
continent and no one can visit it and not come away 
without grateful memories of a warm-hearted, 
quick-minded, high-spirited people, citizens of a 
mighty land and forerunners of a mighty future. 
And the easy course for one who is asked to pre- 
sent his impressions is to picture the surface life of 
these nations and pass by the great political and in- 
tellectual and moral problems which they are facing. 
This easy course is not the course which can secure 
much help for South America and it cannot carry 
us very far toward a worthy understanding of our 
own duty. 

The only things of real interest are, first, the facts 
as they are, and second, what the facts can and 
ought to be. We make no real headway by evasion 
and concealment, by rosy deception and smooth flat- 
teries. We need first of all to look squarely at the 



VI PREFACE 

truth. That is what is attempted here. It is not 
attempted in any Pharisaical spirit. It is attempted 
with full acceptance of the principle, " With what 
judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged." No hon- 
est American can flincV from the straightest and 
sternest judgment of his nation and he will not for 
a moment dodge the reaction upon himself of the 
contention of this book. 

That contention is that where such need exists 
as exists in South America, there is a call for every 
agency which can do anything to meet it. The in- 
evitable corollary is that if such need or any need 
exists in North America which South America or 
Europe can help us meet, it is their duty to give 
and it will be our pleasure to have their help. 

The difficulty in analyzing the South American 
situation lies in the need of discriminating between 
the responsibility of the South American religious 
system and the burden of the racial inheritance. 
Some lay the full load upon one, some upon the 
other. (It belongs to both. Any Church would have 
found the problem difficult. Any race would have 
been depressed and retarded by the South American 
ecclesiastical institutions. 

Some students deprecate all such judgments as 
harsh and intolerant. They say that we must judge 
men and institutions by their conditions and their 
age, that a just sense of the relativity of moral prin- 
ciples will lead us to overlook facts which in another 



PREFACE vii 

age or in other lands would appall us. On the other 
hand, we are content to take the view of the great- 
est Roman Catholic historian of the last generation, 
Lord Acton. It had become *' almost a trick of 
style," say the editors of his famous volume on 
" The History of Freedom and Other Essays," " to 
talk of judging men by the standard of their day 
and to allege the spirit of the age in excuse for the 
Albigensian Crusade or the burning of Hus. Acton 
felt that this was to destroy the very bases of moral 
judgment and to open the way to a boundless scep- 
ticism. Anxious as he was to uphold the doctrine 
of growth in theology, he allowed nothing for it in 
the realm of morals, at any rate in the Christian 
era, since the thirteenth century. He demanded a 
code of moral judgment independent of place and 
time, and not merely relative to a particular civiliza- 
tion. ... It is this preaching in season and out of 
season against the reality of wickedness, and against 
every interference with the conscience, that is the 
real inspiration both of Acton's life and of his writ- 
ings. 

" It is related of Frederick Robertson of Brigh- 
ton, that during one of his periods of intellectual 
perplexity he found that the only rope to hold fast 
by was the conviction, ' it must be right to do right.' 
The whole of Lord' Acton's career might be summed 
up in a counterphrase, * it must be wrong to do 
wrong.' " 



Vm PREFACE 

And as it is always wrong to do wrong, so also 
it is always right to do right. That is why it is 
both the right and the duty of true Christians of 
every Church and of none more than of the Roman 
Catholic Church in the United States to give sym- 
pathy and help to the aspiring people of South 
America who are wrestling with great problems and 
who deserve in their wrestling the good-will and 
practical aid of all friendly men. 

No publications on South America are richer in 
information than those of the Pan-American Union 
in Washington, formerly known as The Interna- 
tional Bureau of the American Republics. Readers 
wishing the latest statistics and reports from the 
South American nations should write to the office of 
the Union. 

R. E. S. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I 

THE GREAT PAST 

The early peoples — The discoverers and explorers — The 
governors — Gains and losses from the Latin conquest — The 
liberators — Causes of movements toward independence — 
Struggle for liberty in various states — The republics — Their 
inheritance — Frequency of South American revolutions. 

Page 3 

CHAPTER II 

THE SOUTH AMERICAN REPUBLICS OF TO-DAY 

General aspects — The more advanced nations — Argentina — 
Brazil — Chile — Uruguay — The less advanced nations — Para- 
guay — Bolivia — Peru — Ecuador — Colombia — Venezuela — Pana- 
ma — South American cities — Taxation — Foreign trade — Im- 
migration — Causes of South America's backwardness. 

Page 33 

CHAPTER III 

THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION 

Education in colonial times — Present conditions — The more 
advanced nations — Argentina — Chile — Brazil — Uruguay — The 
less advanced nations — Peru — Colombia — Ecuador — Venezuela 
— Bolivia — Paraguay — Weakness of South American educa- 
tion — Lack of solidity — Unadaptiveness — Want of trained 
teachers — Neglect of education of women — Neglect of primary 

education and consequent illiteracy Page 82 

ix 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER IV 

THE ROMAN CHURCH AND THE PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS 
LIBERTY 

The founding and development of the Roman Church in 
South America — Pioneer priests — Priestly orders — The Jesu- 
its — Results of Church's work in colonial days — The problem 
of religious liberty — Gradual assertion of the spirit of free- 
dom^Church and State not yet separate — Alternations in the 
movement towards liberty Page 113 



CHAPTER V 

PRESENT RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 

Present religious conditions — South America claimed as a 
Roman Catholic continent — Conditions for which responsi- 
bility is assumed — Social immorality — Illiteracy and igno- 
rance — Practical prohibition of Bible to people — Character of 
priesthood — Note on alleged correspondence between the 
Vatican and the Archbisoph of Santiago in 1897. .Page 141 

CHAPTER VI 
PRESENT RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS {continued) 

Christianity not really given to people — Citations from " The 
Glories of Mary" — Religion encumbered with pagan super- 
stition — Confusion of religion with politics — Strength and 
weakness of Roman Church in South America — Two testi- 
monies from within Page 169 

CHAPTER VII 

THE INDIANS 

The Indian blood in the South Americans— Effects on the 
Indians of the Latin occupation of the continent — The pure 



CONTENTS zi 

Indians — Argentina — Paraguay — Patagonia — Chile — Brazil — 
Bolivia — Peru — Colombia and Ecuador — Summary — Probable 
Indian population — Depth of their need Page 196 



CHAPTER VIII 

PROTESTANT MISSIONS IN SOUTH AMERICA 

Sketch of history and extent of Protestant missions — Four 
questions involved — Are such missions in South America 
warranted? — Evidence already presented — Additional consid- 
erations — Can Protestant missions avoid Roman opposition? 
— If not, should they be continued? — How may they secure 
adequate recognition and support ? Page 217 

Bibliography Page 257 

Index Page 263 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Avenida Central, Rio de Janeiro ; Opened Through the City in 
1904 Frontispiece 

FACING 
PAGE 

A Group of Alcaldes of Peru; Village Presidents, De- 
scendants of the Incas 6 

Cuzco, Peru; Ancient Inca Capital 14 

Docks and Grain Elevators at Buenos Aires, Argentina . 36 

Gathering Coffee, Sao Paulo, Brazil 42 

Immigrant Station, Sao Paulo; the "Ellis Island" of 

Brazil 72 

Methodist School for Boys, Concepcion, Chile ... 88 

Modem PubHc School, Sao Paulo, Brazil .... 92 

The Old Jesuit Church in Cuzco, Peru 116 

Statue of General Bolivar, and Senate Building, Lima, Peru 122 

Santa Lucia, a Pleasure Ground of Santiago, Chile . . 122 

Office of Leading Newspaper, El Mer curio, Santiago, Chile 152 
Avenue of Palm Trees in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil . .186 
Arequipa, Peru; Mount Misti in the Distance . . .186 

Fountain in Buenos Aires, Argentina 190 

Loads of Sugar Cane, Bahia, Brazil 206 

Indians in Bolivia 206 

Harbor, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 220 

Mackenzie College, Sao Paulo, Brazil 246 

Map End of hook 



SOUTH AMERICAN 
PROBLEMS 



CHAPTER I 

THE GREAT PAST 

I. The early peoples. The origin and character 
of the earliest South American civihzation are com- 
pletely hidden from view. The most ancient traces 
of man on the continent are the " kitchen-midden " 
found on the coast of Peru, consisting of sea shells 
and refuse, mixed with fragments of earthen pots 
and ashes and occasionally the implements used by 
these primitive people. After these men, who lived 
on sea-food, there came more advanced tribes of 
whom we know nothing except what may be inferred 
from their pottery and textures found in the deepest 
layers of the soil. This development, such as it was, 
was confined to the sea coast. It was followed by a 
wonderful civilization on the high tablelands. Where 
this civilization came from is a mystery. We know 
nothing of how long it lasted or what its nature was 
except as its architectural ruins show that it had Ori- 
ental kinships and that it was as interesting as it was 
powerful. These ruins can be seen well to-day at 
Tiahuanaco, in Bolivia, just south of Lake Titacaca. 
Immense stone pillars and gateways, which must have 
been brought from great distances, prove that a peo- 
ple lived on these high tablelands in centuries which 
we cannot fix now, akin to the race which left its 
massive monuments in Central America and Mexico, 



4 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

and capable of as great achievements as the ancient 
Egyptians. Of their ideas and language we know 
nothing ; but it is evident that their influence extended 
from Colombia on the North to Chile on the South, 
and as far as Tucuman and the Gran Chaco in what 
is now Argentina. 

This ancient pre-Inca civilization disappeared cen- 
turies before the discovery of America. Its remains, 
however, were scattered over the whole Andean 
plateau and " on this base of an ancient culture, not 
entirely lost in its effects, although its remembrance 
had disappeared from the memory of men, a new era 
of splendor easily revived " under the dominion of 
the Incas.^ Prescott's " History of the Conquest of 
Peru " presents the classic picture of the Inca civili- 
zation, but it is hard to separate fact from fable in 
the authorities on which all such accounts must be 
based. The Incas had no written language or litera- 
ture, and while "there exist ancient chronicles writ- 
ten by some of the conquerors and missionaries . . . 
it is impossible to place absolute confidence in these 
narratives." ^ So that the real character of the em- 
pire of the Incas and the conditions of the South 
American people at the time of the Spanish conquest 
are but uncertainly known to us. It seems clear, 
however, that there was a widespread, socialistic, 
theocratic civilization organized and administered by 
the Incas, and reaching from Colombia to central Chile 
and the Argentine. Wonderful schemes of irrigation 
and not less wonderful systems of roads were con- 
structed. Armies were organized which brought the 
whole Andean plateau under the Inca sovereigns, who 
appear to have possessed from the eleventh century, 

» Garland, "Peru in 1906," 5. » Ibid., 11. 



THE GREAT PAST 5 

when tradition says they first came upon the scene, 
a sacred, semi-divine character. The Inca empire 
had reached its greatest prosperity in the generation 
before the Spaniards came, and the disruption of 
that prosperity by civil war was one of the conditions 
which played into Pizarro's hands when, with a hand- 
ful of audacious desperadoes like himself, he came 
for glory and gold. 

Apart from the Incas the only other great people 
in South America, whom we can identify, were the 
Caras of Ecuador. Tradition says that they came 
from the South in the seventh century and invaded 
the seaboard of central Ecuador, and by the thir- 
teenth century the outlines of their empire, which was 
ruled by a male succession, appear. The Cara king- 
dom reached its zenith at the end of the fourteenth 
century, after which it was overthrown and absorbed 
by the Incas. The Caras were a vigorous stock, how- 
ever, and survived the Inca conquest and also " out- 
lived the decimating tyranny of the Spaniards, so that 
ninety-five per cent of the present population [of 
Ecuador] is composed of their descendants." ^ 

The Incas and the Caras are the only South Ameri- 
can races which attained any sort of organized and 
advanced civilization. And their civilization was weak 
and inarticulate. History has shown us in their fate 
the frailty of a socialistic order. Under the Incas the 
State controlled everything — agriculture, commerce, 
marriage, work and play. The result was that when 
the central government fell, the whole civilization 
collapsed. 

Those thousands of functionaries who spent their lives 
in superintending the furniture, the dress, the work, the 
* Dawson, " South American Republics," Vol. II, aSgf. 



6 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

very cookery, of the families under their charge, and inflict- 
ing corporal chastisement on those whom they surprised in 
a fault, might succeed in forming a correct and regular soci- 
ety, drilled like the bees in a hive, might form a nation of 
submissive slaves, but could never make a nation of men; 
and this is the deep cause that explains the irremediable 
collapse of this Peruvian society under the vigorous blows of a 
handful of unscrupulous Spaniards. It was a skilfully con- 
structed machine, which worked like a chronometer; but 
when once the mainspring was broken, all was over.i' 

Beyond the empires of the Incas and Caras the 
native peoples were Indians with a primitive social 
and political order, not very different probably from 
the Indians of the present time. The strongest and 
most virile race among them were the Araucanians of 
Chile, who showed themselves well nigh unconquer- 
able and whose sturdy, truculent qualities character- 
ize the Chilean people of to-day. In Brazil, covering 
one-half of the continent, and with an Indian popula- 
tion whose size is absolutely unknown to us, there was 
only a stagnant and rudimentary civilization, and the 
Brazilian Indians melted away before the white man's 
coming even more pitifully than the Indians of the 
Andean plateau.^ 

The savage Indians of South America, whom the 
discoverers found, were tame and feeble in compari- 
son with the Indians of North America, and while the 
civilization of the Incas surpassed that of the Aztecs 
in Mexico, their resisting power was as nothing in 
comparison with the energy and fierceness of the 
Aztec race. The differences between North and South 
America to-day are not more the transported differ- 
ences between the Latin and the Germanic peoples 

iReville, "The Native Religions of Mexico and Peru," igSf. 
2 Pawson, " South American Republics," Vol. I, 298! 



THE GREAT PAST 7 

than the continuance of the ancient and primitive dis- 
similarities. " It is a common misconception on the 
part of the EngHsh pubHc that the racial basis of the 
South American peoples is Spanish or Portuguese. It 
is not so — it is Indian ; for it is only another miscon- 
ception to suppose that the native races were wiped 
out by the Conquistadores." ^ They were decimated 
by disease and misuse, but at the same time they were 
made the stock upon which the Latin blood from 
Europe was grafted. To this day no small part of 
the diversities of character among the South American 
republics is due to the differences in the Indian racial 
stocks — Quichua, Aymara, Araucanian, Guarany; and 
in the Latin racial grafts — Galician, Basques, Catalo- 
nian, Andalusian, Portuguese. 

II. The discoverers and explorers. Brazil was one 
of the first parts of South America to be discovered 
and the men who really found it were not Spaniards 
but Portuguese, though Pinzon, a Spaniard of Palos, 
and one of the companions of Columbus, was the first 
European to see the new continent. Before Pinzon 
reached the limit of his journey, the mouth of the 
Amazon, Portugal had despatched Pedro Alvarez 
Cabral, who in April, 1500, sighted what is now the 
State of Bahia. The Portuguese were looking for 
such a treasure as Spain soon afterwards found in 
Peru and Mexico and upon Cabral's return and re- 
port, Amerigo Vespucci, whose name was given to the 
new world, and the greatest techincal navigator of 
the age, was sent to explore. He looked for gold and 
spices and civilized inhabitants and found nothing but 
the brazil-wood, a dye wood well known and highly 
valued in Europe, of a bright red color which gave it 

^The Times. London, South America Supplement, August 30, 1910, 11. 



8 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

its name, " wood the color of fire." This name soon 
displaced the name of Santa Cruz which had been 
given to the land, and it became " the country of brazil 
wood," or, more briefly, Brazil. For thirty years Brazil 
was left unsettled. There was greater wealth else- 
where, but increasing French trade led Portugal to 
recognize the need of occupying the land in some 
formal way, and Martin Affonso de Souza founded 
the first colony at Sao Vincento, near the great cof- 
fee port of Santos, in January, I/B32. The new- 
comers soon pressed up to the high tablelands only a 
few miles from the sea, and another settlement was 
founded near the present city of Sao Paulo. The 
people intermarried with the Indians and struck out 
into the beautiful interior. The Paulistas, as they are 
called, became a stirring, capable race, the European 
element increasing with fresh immigration and show- 
ing also a capacity of reproduction superior to the 
Indian. As a result of the success of these colonies, 
the whole coast of Brazil was divided into twelve 
feudal fiefs or captaincies, and assigned to courtiers. 
Six permanent colonies resulted, and ultimately the 
four centers for the settlement of the country became 
Sao Paulo, Pernambuco, Bahia and Rio de Janeiro. 
The sugar industry was soon established at Pernam- 
buco. The law of Portugal forbade the enslavement 
of the Indians save as punishment for crime, but 
Brazil paid no attention to the law, and with the es- 
tablishment of the sugar trade in Bahia, the import 
of Africans began between the two continents, which 
were not far apart. The Brazilian occupation was 
confined to the coast, and to-day there are still vast 
unexplored areas in the interior of the land. 

Columbus himself began the Spanish exploration of 



THE GREAT PAST 9 

South America. On his third voyage he sighted the 
Venezuelan coast on August i, 1498. The country 
was then inhabited by numerous Indian tribes who 
were not of a pacific character and who bitterly fought 
against the cruelties and enslavements of the Span- 
iards. Not until 1545 were permanent settlements ef- 
fected in the interior. On his fourth and last voyage 
in 1502 Columbus sailed along the Colombian shore, 
but no attempt to conquer the country was made until 
1508, when Ojeda effected a settlement on the coast. 
In 1536 Quesada undertook the subjugation of the 
Chibchas, a civilized people similar to the Incas on the 
high plateau, and established his capitol, the present 
city of Bogota, near the site of the Chibcha capitol. 
On his fourth voyage Columbus sailed on to Panama 
and planted a colony on the Isthmus which the In- 
dians drove away. Not until 1570 was a settlement 
effected by Diego da Nicuera, governor of the prov- 
ince of Castilla del Oro, which extended from the 
Gulf of Darien to Cape Gracias a Dios. In 15 13 Bal- 
boa crossed the Isthmus after a journey of twenty-six 
days and discovered the Pacific Ocean, in the name of 
the King of Spain, claiming it and all the land it laved. 
Darien, founded by Enciso in 151 1, and Panama, 
founded by Davila in 15 18, became the great centers 
of Spanish exploration, and as these were the treasure 
ports from which the gold of Peru was shipped, they 
attracted adventurers from all lands. 

It was Pizarro who opened this wealth of Peru to 
the world and established Spanish dominion on the 
whole Andean plateau. In 1532, after several experi- 
mental expeditions with a little company of one hun- 
dred and two foot soldiers and seventy-two horses, 
the daring adventurer seized the Inca emperor at 



10 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

Cajamarca, overpowered his futile soldiery and took 
possession of Peru, gathering in as the first booty gold 
worth more than four millions sterling. Pizarro 
wasted no time and stood on no scruples. The Inca 
emperor he slew, the wealth he confiscated, and 
within half a dozen years the whole of the vast region 
ruled by the Inca power was overrun and subdued. 
Pizarro's lieutenant, Benalcazar, conquered the north- 
ern region of Ecuador and entered Quito on Decem- 
ber 6, 1534. Pizarro's brother, Gonzalo, was ap- 
pointed Governor of the Province of Quito, and here, 
as elsewhere, the Spaniards apportioned the land and 
people among themselves and established feudal es- 
tates on which they lived upon the labor of the natives. 
To the south of Peru, Pizarro's triumph was even 
easier, and his brother Hernando was given charge of 
Bolivia. Almagro, another of Pizarro's lieutenants, 
was sent further south to Chile, but here he encoun- 
tered a vigorous, hardy people, not debilitated by the 
weakening socialism of the Incas. Individual owner- 
ship of property, rough struggle with nature and men, 
had made the Chilean tribes strong and virile, and 
though Almagro was victorious in his battle he soon 
turned back from such an inhospitable and goldless 
land. Returning to dispute with Pizarro his posses- 
sion of the wealth of Peru, Almagro fell at Pizarro's 
hands and the conquest of Chile was accomplished in 
1540-45 by another lieutenant, Pedro Valdivia, who 
after heroic marches and campaigns subdued the land 
and set up the landed aristocracy which rules the 
country to this day. In the thirty years following 
Valdivia's invasion, settlers from Chile and Bolivia 
passed over the Andes and established Santiago de 
Estero, Mendoza and Cordoba in western Argentina. 



THE GREAT PAST II 

Pedro de Mendoza founded Buenos Aires in 1536, 
although it was not till thirty years later that the settle- 
ment was securely established. The natural approach 
from Europe to the valley of the Rio de la Plata and 
its tributaries was, of course, direct by sea, and Juan 
Diaz de SoHs, coming by water, is credited with hav- 
ing discovered the great river in 15 15. The explorer 
lost his life at the hands of the Uruguayan Indians, 
and it is an odd fact that Paraguay, far inland, was 
an earlier settlement than Uruguay on the sea. A 
settlement was made on the site of Asuncion, the pres- 
ent Paraguayan capital, in 1536, while the first per- 
manent establishments in Uruguay were not set up 
until the Jesuits came in 1624. 

The rapidity with which the Spanish explorers 
overran the western and southern sections of the con- 
tinent is extraordinary. In fifty years they had laid 
the foundations of practically all the Spanish states 
which are now organized as nine independent republics. 
One reason for the rapidity of conquest was the fact 
that the Spaniards had not come as agricultural set- 
tlers, but as adventurers for gold. They were looking 
for quick and easy wealth. They did no more work 
themselves than was avoidable. They were equal 
to any heroism but to no industry. The Indian popu- 
lations were impressed to support and enrich them. 
The newcomers passed on to their children no in- 
heritance of industrious conflict with common condi- 
tions, no disposition to seek wealth in the orderly 
development of common resources, no agricultural 
knowledge, but only the dominant ideas of quick ac- 
tion or feudal ease. 

III. The governors. Upon the discovery of the 
new world, the Pope made a division of the globe 



12 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

between Portugal and Spain, and the two countries, 
by the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494, had fixed the 
line of division. The lands which they discovered they 
claimed to possess and undertook at once to govern. 
The era of independent adventurers and proprietors 
soon passed, and the two nations marked out prov- 
inces and viceroyalties and organized permanent po- 
litical institutions. 

In Brazil the captaincies were reabsorbed by the 
Portuguese crown, and Thome de Souza was ap- 
pointed governor-general and arrived in Bahia in 
April, 1549, with six Jesuits, the first to set foot in 
the new world. There were struggles with the 
French and the Dutch, and in the South with the 
Spaniards, but Portuguese power was steadily solidi- 
fied. The colonists were heavily taxed for the benefit 
of Portugal. Brazil learned thus early to bear a 
crushing burden, or it could not endure to-day the 
load of internal revenue duties which retards the de- 
velopment of the land and makes the prices even of 
home manufactures exorbitant. " All goods imported 
from the mother country paid twelve per cent duty. 
Salt and iron were taxed one hundred per cent. Every 
article introduced into the mining districts was sur- 
charged 2d. per lb." ^ A printing press appearing 
in Rio was ordered to be destroyed by the Court. 
The country was supported on slaves and forced In- 
dian labor. Nevertheless, the land with its immense 
resources and small population, less than 3,000,000 
people in 1800, the number of Indians unknown, in 
a country as big as Russia or the United States, great- 
ly prospered,^ and in 1807 John, the Prince Regent of 
Portugal, fleeing from Napoleon, transferred the Por- 

» OakenfuU, " Brazil in 1909," 67. » Ibid., 62, 



THE GREAT PAST I3 

tuguese Court from Lisbon to Rio, and soon raised 
the colony to coordinate rank with the mother coun- 
try. This transfer of the Court transformed Brazil. 
In spite of the Regent's dread of Liberalism, the 
opening of free ports, the allowance of free manu- 
facture, the tide of immigration, the introduction of 
the printing press and the advent of the best elements 
from Portugal produced a steady development of 
political consciousness. The adoption of a liberal 
constitution by Spain in 1720 led, by example, to a 
demand for constitutional government in Brazil which 
was taken up by Dom Pedro, John's son, and issued 
in the establishment of an independent monarchy with 
Dom Pedro as emperor. 

Pizarro was the ruler of the Spanish territories 
south of Panama until his assassination by Almagro's 
followers in 1541, in Lima which Pizarro had built 
as his capital city. Upon Pizarro's death the right to 
nominate a governor reverted to the Spanish Crown, 
and in 1^42 the viceroyalty of Peru was established. 
For nearly three centuries Peru was governed in the 
name of the King of Spain by a succession of thirty- 
eight viceroys, and when there was no viceroy, power 
was provisionally exercised by a Court of Justice, or, 
as it was called, the Real Audiencia de Lima, founded 
in 1544. 

Though the viceroys who followed each other in rapid 
succession were selected from among the greatest grandees 
of Spain, they were held to an increasingly rigid account, 
and the smallest concession to commerce or a failure to send 
home the utmost farthing which could be wrung from the 
people was severely and peremptorily punished. Their juris- 
diction extended over all Spanish South America; the cap- 
tains-general of New Granada, Venezuela, and Chile, the 
royal audience of Bolivia, the president of Ecuador, and the 



14 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

governors of Tucuman, Paraguay, and Buenos Aires being 
all nominally subject to their orders. But in practice these 
widely separated divisions of the continent were largely in- 
dependent. Lima was, however, the political, commercial, 
and social center of South America. To its port came from 
Panama the goods destined for Peru, Chile, Bolivia, and even 
Paraguay and Buenos Aires. Many of the viceroys were 
lovers of letters, and the university produced scholars and 
authors not unworthy of comparison with those of the old 
world. The continual influx of Spaniards of distinguished 
Castilian ancestry and gentle training made the language of 
even the common people singularly pure, and the sonorous 
elegance of the Spanish tongue as spoken during the classical 
period has been best preserved in the comparative isolation 
of Peru. The influence of the bishops and priests, the Jesuits 
and the Franciscans, was hardly inferior to that of the offi- 
cials. The clergy controlled education; every village had its 
parish priest who compelled the Indians to go to mass and 
made them pay heavily for the privilege; the Inquisition was 
early introduced and performed its dreadful functions with- 
out let or hindrance.! 

The Spaniards founded cities, which the Indians 
had never done, with the exception of Cuzco in Peru, 
Quito in Ecuador, and Charcas in Bolivia. And in 
spite of all hindrances, the country slowly developed, 
although not without grave retrogressions. The nat- 
ural efforts of Spain to monopolize all trade provoked 
smuggling and illegal commerce, and in order to ad- 
minister the vast territories more efficiently, they were 
divided, in the eighteenth century, into three viceroy- 
alties, (i) New Granada, embracing Venezuela, Co- 
lombia and Ecuador, (2) Peru, corresponding to Peru 
of to-day, and (3) Buenos Aires, embracing Paraguay 
and what is now the Argentine and the audiencia of 
Chanos or Bolivia. Chile remained attached to Peru 
as a semi-independent captaincy-general. 

* Dawson, " South American Republics," Vol. II, 67flf. 




u 



u 



THE GREAT PAST 15 

The dominant object of both Portuguese and Span- 
iards in the government of South America was the 
rapid exploitation of the available v^ealth of the land, 
especially gold and silver. The Europeans did not 
come to settle, to find a home for freedom, to increase 
the local v^ealth and prosperity. They came to de- 
plete that wealth. Their ambition was to return with 
riches and power to the homelands. They brought 
with them also only such political ideals and insti- 
tutions as they knew. The characteristic form of 
government in Spain had been town or communal. 
Spain was not a centralized or unified state. Basques, 
Galicians and Andalusians were about as distinct in 
character and temper as diverse nationalities. For 
centuries Spain had been a set of loosely joined prov- 
inces and the provincial governments were made up 
of municipalities. These characteristics found ex- 
pression in the new world. There was no strong 
sense of nationality, no notion of state government 
resting on personal rights and duties. There were 
only the old ideas of semi-independent feudal divis- 
ions, with a ruling privileged class and an under- 
world of serfs. 

The pure-blooded Spaniard never lost the charac- 
ter of an alien taskmaster, and to this day the South 
American aristocracy inclines to the ideal of the past — 
a feudal authority, with Europe as its real home, the 
center of its fashions and pleasures and ideas, and a 
dependent and inferior class supporting it. But from 
the beginning there grew up a new element of the 
population. No women came with the first settlers, 
and as a result the Europeans took native wives or 
concubines, and the people of the mixed blood who 
constitute the vast bulk of the South American popu- 



l6 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

lation began. At first the conditions of this new 
race were not wholly favorable. It was not the best 
blood of Europe that was mixed with the Indian 
blood. When Cabral discovered Brazil, we are offi- 
cially told, he " ordered a solemn mass to be per- 
formed, took a solemn possession of the new country 
for the Portuguese crown, and then set out to India 
after leaving two criminals on shore that they might 
learn the language of the country and afterwards 
serve as interpreters." ^ This same official memoir 
tells of Diego Alvares, the first great Brazilian col- 
onist, that " he lived among the Indians of Bahia in a 
state of concubinate with several indigenous women, 
by whom he had a great deal of children." And the 
same authority states that one of the great tasks of 
the Jesuits when they came to Brazil was the 

mission of moralizing the colonial society, profoundly cor- 
rupted by the bad example offered by the semi-barbarous 
Portuguese of the first settlement. A great many newly 
come Portuguese, seduced by the pernicious examples lying 
before their eyes, lived in concubinate with a great deal of 
female Indians, after the local fashion, or with them whom 
they singled out of their slaves. The priests themselves did 
the same; so that Nobrega wrote to the king, on August 9, 
1549, that the laymen took a very bad example by the priests 
and the Gentiles by the Christians; that the interior of the 
country was full of Christians' children, both young and 
adult, male and female, who lived and multiplied after the 
Gentile way; that hate and disputes were to be found every- 
where and religious and judicial affairs were badly managed. 
Upon this the Jesuits, aided by the governor, obtained the 
celebration of marriages; several settlers chose indigenous 
slaves, whom they freed and married, others married the 
few European women who had accompanied the expedition; 
wherefore Nobrega recommended in the above-cited letter 
orphan girls or even prostitutes to be sent to Bahia, for they 

>Vianna, "Memoir of the State of Bahia," 597. 



THE GREAT PAST 1 7 

would all marry, because the country was vast and un- 
civilized.^ 

And it cannot be denied that conditions not very dis- 
similar characterized the Spanish colonies. But while 
a strain of moral laxity was in this way injected into 
the Latin American inheritance, other and worthier 
qualities passed into it also, such qualities as daring, 
hopefulness, venturesomeness, devotion to a chosen 
leadership, and racial loyalty.^ 

Something is to be said on each side of the question 
whether the Latin conquest of South America brought 
chiefly advantage or disadvantage to the continent 
and its people. Looking at South America to-day 
and contemplating the future, assuredly one must con- 
clude that the conquest brought gain and promise. 
And even from the beginning, the Spanish occupation 
— and the same thing could be said of the Portuguese, 

brought many incontestable benefits to South America. To 
say nothing of the civilized system of jurisprudence, the let- 
ters and the religion which have made the peoples of the 
continent members of the great western European family, 
the introduction of new and valuable animals, grains, and 
fruits raised the level of average well-being among the sur- 
viving inhabitants. Horses, asses, cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, 
chickens, pigeons, wheat, barley, oats, rice, olives, grapes, 
oranges, sugar-cane, apples, peaches and related fruits, and 
even the banana and the cocoa palm were introduced by the 
Spaniards.3 

But Mr. Dawson points out on the other hand the 
untold sufferings of the Indians, the widespread de- 
struction of their civilization, of their roads and irri- 

^ Vianna, " Memoir of the State of Bahia," 6io. 

' See " Cambridge Modern History," Vol. X, chap, viii, for a com- 
prehensive and penetrating account of the Spanish Conquest and its 
effects. 

•Dawson, "South American Republics," Vol. II, 66. 



l8 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

gating canals and terraces, so that Peru to-day is 
vastly worse off in these regards than it was under the 
Incas, the death of thousands from exhaustion in im- 
pressed toil, the starvation of whole villages. And 
when the mines were opened the natives were driven 
to a deadly work like sheep to shambles. The Inca 
population, whatever it may have been, was reduced 
to 8,000,000 in 1575, and in Peru proper the last cen- 
sus taken before independence showed that the num- 
ber of Indians had become reduced to 608,999 i^ ^ 
territory which at the time of the conquest had a popu- 
lation of five to six millions. " In the neighborhood 
of Potosi the Indian population fell within a hundred 
years to a tenth of the original numbers.'' ^ Dawson 
calls the colonial period " the devil's dance of Spanish 
carnage," and Las Casas, the contemporary defender 
of the Indians, declared: 

" The Devil could not have done more mischief than the 
Spaniards have done in distributing and despoiling the coun- 
tries, in their rapacity and tyranny; subjecting the natives to 
cruel tasks, treating them like beasts, and persecuting those 
especially who apply to the monks for instruction." 2 

Of Brazil Oaken full says : " The exploitation of the 
Indians was a vast source of riches. In two years 
no fewer than 80,000 arrived on the coast, in the 
neighborhood of the capital (Bahia) to be employed 
in the sugar mills, etc. Almost the whole of these 
died in a very brief space of time." ^ The South 
American Indians, far more numerous and far less 
savage than the Indians in the United States and 
Canada, offered only a futile resistance to an exploita- 

1 Dawson, " South American Republics," Vol. II, 58, 59, 64, 242; 
Garland, " Peru in 1906," 33-35. 

2 Quoted by Grose in " Advance in the Antilles," 4. 

3 " Brazil in 1909," 54. 



THE GREAT PAST I9 

tion which in the lands settled by the English and 
French was not attempted because the aims of these 
people in their settlement were so radically different 
from the aims of the Spanish and Portuguese, and 
which would have been impossible if it had been at- 
tempted. Miscegenation and exploitation were two 
differentiating characteristics of the Latin treatment 
of the Indians. The influence of this fact upon the 
nature of the problem with which the South American 
nations are dealing to-day is obvious. 

But it was not upon the native people alone that 
Spanish colonial government pressed heavily. It was 
an intolerable burden to the colonists themselves. 
There never has been before or since such unqualified 
inbreeding of colonial policy. No immigration was 
permitted but Spanish immigration. Even at the close 
of the eighteenth century it was with difficulty that 
Humboldt secured the privilege of journeying through 
the country for scientific purposes.^ The vitality and 
progressiveness of a varied immigration were denied 
to South America until the nineteenth century, when 
it began to come in. It is this which has made Chile 
and Argentina and Brazil, the lands chiefly influenced 
by it, the most aggressive and active of the South 
American countries. Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, 
Peru and Bolivia, untouched by this stream, remain 
almost as they have been for centuries. But even on 
the Spanish and Portuguese colonists the yoke pressed 
unendurably and chafed men to discontent and revolt. 

IV. The liberators. Spain's attitude toward her 
colonies was suicidal. They were forbidden to trade 
with foreign nations or to engage in traffic between 
the provinces. And innumerable small limitations 

^ See Akers, " A History of South America, 1854-1904." 



20 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

were laid upon agriculture and commerce. One com- 
munity was forbidden to plant vines; another to sow 
flax. One place could not export wines or almonds; 
another could not build mills. All trade had to pass 
through Panama. Even the trade of Argentina could 
not flow directly to and from Spain, but goods from 
Cadiz for Buenos Aires must go to the Isthmus, be 
carried across on mules and shipped to Peru, there to 
be unloaded at Callao and carried by caravan for 
months over the Andean plateau and across the plains 
^f the Argentine. The manifesto of the Constituent 
Congress of the United Provinces of South America, 
issued from Buenos Aires, October 25, 1817, set forth 
what the liberators held to have been the abuses of 
Spain : 

From the moment when the Spaniards possessed themselves 
of these countries, they preferred the system of securing 
their possessions by extermination, destruction and degrada- 
tion. The plans of this extensive mischief were forthwith 
carried into effect, and have been continued without any in- 
termission during the space of three hundred years. They 
began by assassinating the monarchs of Peru and they after- 
wards did the same with the other chieftains and distin- 
guished men who came in their way. . . . The Spaniards 
thus placed a barrier to the population of the country. . . . 
Entire towns have in some places disappeared, either buried 
in the ruins of mines, or their inhabitants destroyed by the 
compulsive and poisonous labor of working them. . . . The 
teaching of science was forbidden us. . . . Commerce has at 
all times been an exclusive monopoly in the hands of the 
traders of Spain and the consignees they sent off to America. 
The public offices were reserved for Spaniards. . . . Among 
the viceroys who have governed in America, four natives 
of the country alone are numbered; and 602 captains-general 
and governors, with the exception of fourteen, all have been 
Spaniards. . . . Everything was so arranged by Spain that 
the degradation of the natives should prevail in America. 
It did not enter into her views that wise men should be 



THE GREAT PAST 21 

formed, fearful that minds and talents would be created 
capable of promoting the interests of their country and caus- 
ing civilization, manners, and those excellent capabilities with 
which the Colombian children are gifted, to make a rapid 
progress. She increasingly diminished our population, ap- 
prehensive that some day or other it might be in a state to 
rise against a dominion sustained only by a few hands, to 
whom the keeping of detached and extensive regions was 
intrusted. She carried on an exclusive trade because the 
supposed opulence would make us proud and inclined to free 
ourselves from outrage. She denied to us the advancement 
of industry in order that we might be divested of the means 
of rising out of misery and poverty; and we were excluded 
from offices of trust in order that Peninsulars only might 
hold influence in the country and form the necessary habits 
and inclinations, w4th a view to leaving us in such a state 
of dependence as to be unable to think or act, unless accord- 
ing to Spanish forms. 

Such was the system firmly and steadily upheld by the 
viceroys, each one of whom bore the state and arrogance of 
a vizier. . . . We held neither direct nor indirect influence 
in our own legislation; this was instituted in Spain. . . . We 
were aware that no other resource was left to us than pa- 
tience, and that for him who was not resigned to endure all, 
even capital punishment was not sufficient, since for cases 
of this kind torments new and of unheard-of cruelty had 
been invented, such as made nature shudder. 

It cannot be denied that this was a temperate state- 
ment, as temperate surely as our Declaration of In- 
dependence. The wrongs of the British colonies in 
North America were mild and beneficent in compari- 
son with the wrongs of the Spanish colonies in the 
South. Captain Basil Hall wrote in his journal in 
1823, " The whole purpose for which the South Amer- 
icans existed was held to be in collecting together 
precious metals for the Spaniards, and if the wild 
horses and cattle could have been trained -to perform 
these offices, the inhabitants might have been dispensed 



22 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

with altogether, and then the colony system would 
have been perfect." ^ The conditions which have be- 
come familiar to us in Cuba and the Philippines pre- 
vailed all over Central and South America. Spain 
and Portugal were supreme, and while there was 
doubtless a great deal of contentment and a form of 
civilization, it was a base expression of wrong social 
and political principles immensely degraded by the 
autocracy of the Government and the fanaticism and 
domination of the Church. 

Yet it was not alone the wrongs from which they 
suffered which aroused the Latin American states to 
revolution. The Spanish colonies felt the influence 
of the movement towards liberty then altering the 
history of Europe and North America. Spain kept 
them as ignorant as possible of what was going on, 
but both they and Spain felt that some change in their 
relations would inevitably follow. Spain recognized 
the independence of the United States in 1783. How 
could she continue to deny all autonomy to her own 
colonies ? The Count of Aranda suggested to Charles 
III, " the reorganization of all his colonial possessions 
in America, by the establishment of three kingdoms, 
namely, Mexico, Peru and the Spanish Main, includ- 
ing what is now Venezuela and Colombia. Over these, 
members of the Spanish royal family were to be 
placed as kings; and the Spanish monarch was to be 
supreme with the title of emperor. The scheme was 
rejected as too chimerical." ^ But by recognizing 
the right or at least the fact of American independence 
in the North, Spain was in a weakened position to 
deny it in the South. 

» See Bigelow, " The Children of the Nations," 6ff. 
2 Brown, " Latin America," 127. 



THE GREAT PAST 23 

The people of South America were making com- 
parisons for themselves. The manifesto already quoted 
proceeds with the statement : 

Neither so great nor so repeated were the hardships which 
roused the provinces of Holland when they took up arms to 
free themselves from the yoke of Spain ; nor those of Por- 
tugal to effect the same purpose. Less were the hardships 
which placed the Swiss under the direction of William Tell 
and in open opposition to the German Emperor; less, those 
which determined the United States of North America to 
resist the imposts forced upon them by a British king; less, 
in short, the powerful motives which have urged other coun- 
tries, not separated by nature from the parent state to cast 
off an iron yoke and consult their own felicity. 

Even more than by the revolution of the United 
States, the South American and Mexican patriots 
were inspired by the spirit and character of the French 
Revolution. Bolivar, after finishing his education in 
Spain, went to Paris and saw there the closing scenes 
of the Revolution. Later, he returned to Paris and 
lived there for five years. Subsequently, he returned 
to Venezuela by way of the United States. But 
France probably influenced him more than America. 
Racially, the Latin American people are more in sym- 
pathy with France, while temperamentally their whole 
movement resembles the French Revolution far more 
than ours. They liked the emotions and principles 
of it better, and we can understand the struggle for 
the emancipation of South America more readily, if 
we imagine it as a movement of Frenchmen rather 
than of Americans. 

And curiously and with no intention of his own, 
the man who made independence possible for the 
Spanish colonies was Napoleon. " Probably no man 
exerted a greater influence in promoting the develop- 



24 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

ment of liberty and of free institutions on this con- 
tinent " than he.^ In 1808, he deposed Ferdinand VII, 
King of Spain, and put his brother Joseph on the 
throne. Spain was soon torn by civil war and the 
stringency of her colonial government was relaxed. 
The government at home was disorganized, and the 
colonies set up their own governments, some regard- 
ing them as tentative only, to be suspended when Fer- 
dinand should be reinstated; others rejoicing at the 
opportunity which they afforded of securing entire 
independence. In 1810, the first declaration of in- 
dependence was made. The first step was taken in 
Venezuela. There were three parties there: the im- 
perialists, or Bonapartists, the adherents of Ferdinand, 
and the liberators, who believed in independence. On 
April 18, 181 o, there arrived at Caracas the commis- 
sioners who announced the formation of a regency at 
Cadiz and called upon the Venezuelans to be loyal. 
Bolivar expressed the feeling of the liberators. " This 
power which fluctuates in such a manner on the Penin- 
sula," he said, " and does not secure itself, invites 
us to establish the junta of Caracas and be governed 
by ourselves." On the following day, the junta was 
proclaimed as an independent power. " It voted not 
to recognize the regency of Cadiz and announced that 
Venezuela, in virtue of its natural and political right, 
would proceed to the formation of a government of 
its own." 2 As Minister Romero said, " A condition 
of things had been reached which made independence 
a necessity that could not be suppressed, postponed 
or evaded." In this same year, steps towards inde- 
pendence were taken on May 25th in Buenos Aires 

1 Ellinwood, " Questions and Phases of Foreign Missions," 197. 
' Butterworth, " South America," 42. 



THE GREAT PAST 25 

for the Argentine ; on July 20th, in Bogota for Colom- 
bia; on September i6th, in Mexico; on September 
1 8th, in Santiago for Chile, and *' during the same 
month of September in most of the other colonies." ^ 
In some cases, these declarations were put forth as 
expressive of no disloyalty to Ferdinand, but were 
on the other hand distinctly friendly to him and de- 
signed only to secure from him on his return to power 
some recognition of rights denied before. And al- 
though on Ferdinand's restoration these hopes were 
disappointed, the declaration of the council at Caracas 
on April 19, 1810, the first of all the actual steps 
towards independence, was to the effect that the gov- 
ernment then to be formed would exercise authority 
in the name of Ferdinand VII, pending his restoration 
to the throne. Nothing would satisfy Spain, how- 
ever, but the re-establishment of her complete and au- 
tocratic authority. The mediation of Great Britain 
in behalf of the colonies was refused. The patriots 
in 1817 said: 

The Spanish ministers, blinded by their sanguinary caprice, 
spurned the mediation and issued rigorous orders to all their 
generals to push the war and to inflict heavier punishments. 
On every side, scaffolds were raised and recourse was had 
to every invention for spreading consternation and dismay. 
... In the town of Valle-Grande, they enjoyed the brutal 
pleasure of cutting off the ears of the inhabitants and sent 
off baskets filled with these presents to their headquarters. 
. . . They have not only been cruel and implacable in mur- 
dering, but they have also divested themselves of all morality 
and public decency, by whipping old religious persons in 
the open squares and also women bound to a cannon, causing 
them previously to be stripped and exposed to shame and 
derision. . . . They have declared that the laws of war ob- 
served among civilized nations ought not to be practiced 

* Romero, " Mexico and the United States," 295. 



26 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

among us; and their General Pezuela, after the battle of 
Ayouma, in order to avoid any compromise or understand- 
ing, had the arrogance to answer General Belgrano that with 
insurgents it was impossible to enter into treaties. Such has 
been the conduct of Spaniards towards us since the restora- 
tion of Ferdinand de Bourbon to the throne of his ances- 
tors. We then believed that the termination of so many 
sufferings and disasters had arrived. We had supposed that 
a king, schooled by the lessons of adversity, would not be 
indifferent to the desolation of his people, and we sent out 
a commissioner to him in order to acquaint him with our 
situation. We could not for a moment conceive that he 
would fail to meet our wishes as a benign prince, nor could 
we doubt that our requests would interest him in a manner 
corresponding to that gratitude and goodness which the cour- 
tiers of Spain had extolled to the skies. But a new and 
unknown species of ingratitude was reserved for America, 
surpassing all the examples found in the histories of the 
greatest tyrants. 

The same justification of their course was advanced 
by the Venezuelan patriots in their declaration of 
complete independence on July 5, 181 1. This was the 
first formal and unqualified assertion of independence. 
It was the first act in the great movement which de- 
livered northern South America from the sovereignty 
of Spain. The great hero of the movement in the 
north was Simon Bolivar, who was born in Caracas 
in 1783. Bolivar was preceded, however, by Fran- 
cisco Miranda, who was born in 1756 and who 
dreamed the dream of independence and strove to 
realize it before its time. He passed on his vision and 
his spirit to Bolivar, but died in prison, where Bolivar 
and some fellow-patriots had placed him. It was un- 
der BoHvar's leadership that the independence of 
Venezuela was declared at Caracas. After many vi- 
cissitudes the victory of Boyaca, on August 7, 1819, 
enabled him to proclaim, on December 17, 1819, the 



THE GREAT PAST 27 

Republic of Colombia, consisting of Venezuela and 
New Granada, the latter of which in 1858 became the 
United States of Colombia, a separate republic, re- 
verting thus to the independence secured during the 
disturbed days before Venezuela had actually obtained 
her liberty. On June 24, 1821, he gained the decisive 
victory of Carabobo which ended the Spanish power 
in the new combined republic, and the same year he 
was elected its president. 

In the south, meanwhile, a similar movement was 
going on. Argentine took advantage of the unsettled 
conditions in Spain to set up its own provisional gov- 
ernment, and on January 31, 1813, a congress as- 
sembled in Buenos Aires and elected Posadas dic- 
tator. On July 9, 1816, independence was formally 
declared. Of the great characters who won freedom 
for the south, San Martin stands out as the foremost. 
Having taken a prominent part in the emancipation 
of Buenos Aires, he turned his attention westward 
and planned for the deliverance of Chile and Peru. 
From his position as Governor of the Province of 
Cuzco he marched over the Andes into Chile and at 
Maipo, on April 5, 1818, fought the battle against the 
royalists which freed Chile. His next step was a 
naval expedition. Commanded by Lord Cochrane, a 
British Admiral, his fleet sailed from Valparaiso and 
San Martin entered Lima. On July 28, 1821, Peru 
declared her independence. 

These two delivering movements met at Guayaquil 
in 1822, when Bolivar and San Martin came together 
and conferred over their great plan to deliver the 
whole of South America. San Martin believed that 
his work was now done; that Bolivar could accom- 
plish the liberation of the western regions better alone, 



28 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

so he quietly withdrew. " The presence of a for- 
tunate general in the country which he has conquered 
is detrimental to the state," he said. *' I have achieved 
the independence of Peru. I cease to be a public 
man." Whereupon he crossed the Andes, took his 
daughter with him to Europe, and lived there in pov- 
erty and neglect. 

Midway between the movement of independence in 
the north aiid the movement in the south, was the 
work of deliverance done by Sucre in Ecuador and 
Peru. At the battle of Pichincha, on May 24, 1822, 
he destroyed the Spanish power in Ecuador, the new 
republic joining at first the republic of Colombia. On 
December 9, 1824, with Bolivar, he fought the great 
battle of Ayacucho against the Spanish viceroy La 
Serna, and finally destroyed the authority of Spain. 
The provinces of Upper Peru, which were thus freed 
and which had theoretically been part of the Argen- 
tine Republic as successor to the vice-royalty of 
Buenos Aires, were now organized into an inde- 
pendent republic under the name of Bolivia. 

The course of the struggle in the smaller states of 
South America it is not necessary to follow. It is 
necessary to speak only of Brazil.^ 

There the course of affairs was peculiar and dis- 
tinct. Under Dom Pedro I it was already an inde- 
pendent country, freed from European domination. 
What it required was emancipation not from Por- 
tugal but from monarchical to republican government, 
and this transformation came peacefully. The rule 
of Pedro I was so unsatisfactory that he abdicated 

* For a thorough yet succinct account of the establishment of inde- 
pendence in Spanish America, see " Cambridge Modern History," Vol. 
X, chap. ix. 



THE GREAT PAST 29 

in 1 83 1 in favor of his five-year-old son, who issued 
from a regency to assume power in 1840. Pedro II 
was a remarkable man and his government of Brazil 
helped to prepare it for freedom. He was himself 
a royalist, but he freed the Brazilian slaves and in 
doing so brought on his own downfall. The eco- 
nomic change which resulted alienated the wealthy 
class. Plantations dependent upon slave labor became 
profitless. Comtism became a dominant philosoph- 
ical and political influence. The army was in the 
hands of the anti-monarchists. The Emperor bowed 
to the inevitable and withdrew to Europe and a new 
life stirred through the nation now taking its place 
as the last among the South American republics among 
which in territory and population it is first.^ 

V. The republics. The South American republics, 
as we have seen, have a radically different heredity 
from the United States. In North America the re- 
public grew out of local self-government and rested 
on the English or Teutonic political idea of strong 
nationality, which not only did not sacrifice self- 
government but depended upon it, and on the princi- 
ple of representation and responsibility. In South 
America the republics rested on the Roman political 
idea of " a conquering people holding sway over a 
number of vanquished peoples." ^ The Roman idea 
was by no means necessarily tyrannical. It opened 
citizenship to all and it made all theoretically equal 
before the law, but it lacked the representative prin- 
ciple. The South American republics have the char- 
acter which was inevitable from their political an- 
cestry. 

1 " Cambridge Modern History," Vol. X, chap. x. 
2 Fiske, " The Beginnings of New England," 24. 



30 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

Spanish- Americans • have known only two forms of gov- 
ernment, which have everywhere and always coexisted, 
though they seem inconsistent. First, there is an executive — 
the limits of his power ill-defined, and often imposing his 
will by force, in essence arbitrary and personal, and feared 
rather than respected by the people; secondly, the Cabildos 
and the modern deliberative bodies. Never really elective, 
these have nevertheless performed many of the functions of 
bodies truly representative; they have checked the arbitrary 
executives and furnished a basis for government by discus- 
sion. For centuries the communities looked to them for the 
conduct of ordinary local governmental affairs, and they 
survived all the storms of colonial and revolutionary times. 
On the other hand, their importance in the Spanish govern- 
mental scheme has been a most potent influence in pre- 
venting the growth of local representative government by 
elective assemblies and officials. Consequently, in national 
matters, freely elected and truly representative assembles have 
been hard to obtain. Legislation has been controlled by the 
functionaries, and there has been no general and continuous 
participation in governmental affairs by the body of the 
people. Government by discussion and by common-sense of 
the majority is difficult to establish among a people accus- 
tomed for centuries to seeing matters in the hands of offi- 
cials whom they had no practical means of holding to re- 
sponsibility. The people have rarely felt that the executive 
was their own officer.^ 

The South American republics deserve great credit 
for their increasing political vitality and their growth 
in democratic spirit, in view of their political inheri- 
tance. They sprang out of and carried forward with 
them the spirit and ideals of Spanish dominion, and 
as the " Cambridge Modern History " says, 

There is something medieval in the Spanish dominion down 
to its close; the Middle Ages supply the best parallel to its 
apparent inconsistencies — high ideals and shameful vices, ten- 
der humanity and shocking ferocity, thoughtful provision and 

» Dawson, " South American Republics," Vol. I, 55! 



THE GREAT PAST 3I 

actual neglect, cult of formulas and indifference to facts, 
exaltation of ceremonial faith and shameless profligacy, a 
theory of all-pervading sovereignty and acquiescence in con- 
stant breaches of that sovereignty.^ 

We have understood too little the intricate character 
of the difficulties which the South American republics 
have had to overcome, and have given them too little 
of the help and sympathy which they have deserved. 
They have still great problems to deal with, entailed 
by their inheritance, and in no lands of the world, in 
consequence, is sound popular education more vitally 
necessary to the well-being and progress of the state. 
Only three of the ten South American republics are 
federal unions composed of sovereign states like the 
United States or the states of Mexico. These three 
are the Argentine Republic, the United States of 
Brazil, and the United States of Venezuela. All the 
other republics have a unitary or centralized form of 
government, the provincial or district heads being ap- 
pointed by the President. In each republic is the 
usual division into executive, legislative and judicial 
branches. In some states, as Chile, Venezuela and 
Uruguay, the judges of the Supreme Court are elected 
by the national congress. In others, as the Argentine 
and Colombia, they are appointed by the President 
of the republic. In some, as Uruguay, the President 
is elected by Congress. In most of the South Ameri- 
can states he is elected by electors chosen by popular 
vote. But what has been said of the political hered- 
ity of the South American institutions will suffice to 
explain the fact that the popular vote is very small. 
In the election of 1908 only 18,000 votes were cast 
in Buenos Aires, a city of over a million inhabitants. 

» Vol. X, 27^. 



32 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

The frequency of South American revolutions has 
made some of the South American repubHcs ridicu- 
lous in the eyes of the world. But something is to be 
said in their defense. First is the character of their 
political inheritance; and secondly, the lack of really 
representative government, the limitations of the fran- 
chise, the ignorance of the great masses of the peo- 
ple, and the farcical character of elections which are 
always controlled by the party in power, have made 
revolutions the only possible way of securing a change 
of administration. A revolution is indeed a sort of 
popular election. And there is something noble in the 
loyalty and sacrifice with which multitudes of poor 
people who knew little or nothing of any principles 
or issues which were at stake, have fought for their 
leaders and followed them to death. But it was Latin 
feudalism rather than American democracy. 

The South American nations are intensely devoted 
to liberty. Republican institutions with them face 
many grave problems, but they do not face the prob- 
lem of national scepticism as to republican principles. 
These states are republics by conviction and forever, 
and it is essential, therefore, that their people should 
become such citizens as can alone sustain and admin- 
ister free institutions. " Our needs," say the wisest 
and most patriotic men in South America, '' are char- 
acter and intelligence. The discoverers and colonists 
bequeathed us boldness and cleverness, but their blood 
runs purely in the veins of but a few of our people, 
and even with the few it is not always remembered 
that courage must be upright and that cleverness 
must be thorough and true. We need what every na- 
tion needs, integrity and real education." 



CHAPTER II 

THE SOUTH AMERICAN REPUBLICS 
OF TO-DAY 

South America, both in its physical geography and 
in its people, presents vivid contrasts with our own 
continent. The two continents do not vary greatly in 
size. The area of North America is 19,810,200 square 
kilometers and of South America, 17,813,950, or ac- 
cording to the figures of the International Bureau of 
American Republics, now the Pan American Union, 
8>559'00O and 7,598,000 square miles respectively. 
But the two continents are of strikingly different 
configuration and in the matter of river systems South 
America is more richly equipped than any other con- 
tinent. This water system renders the development 
of interior South America far simpler than the devel- 
opment of interior Africa. It can be made to do for 
these republics what China's water system, much of 
it artificial, has done for China. 

The population of South America is less than one- 
half that of North America. We have 110,000,000 
people of whom 90,000,000 are white, and South 
America has between 40,000,000 and 50,000,000 of 
whom less than 15,000,000 are pure white blood. 
South America is more thinly settled, with its popu- 
lation scattered over its immense area, than any other 
part of the world. Its population has probably grown 
less rapidly in the last century than that of any other 
portion of the world, unless it is Africa. The popula- 

33 



34 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

tion per square kilometer (in 1906) of some of the 
different countries will show the opportunity for de- 
velopment in South America. 

Belgium 231 United States 8.3 

Holland 158 Guatemala 14 

England 133 Honduras 5 

Italy 113 Mexico 6.8 

France 73 Costa Rica 5.7 

Austria 70 Brazil 2 

Spain zi Argentine 1.8 

Eastern Russia 21 Colombia 3 

Japan 113 Venezuela 2.5 

China zi Chile 4.4 

India 81.6 Paraguay 2.6 

Siam 10 Bolivia 2 

Korea 56 Peru 2 

Persia 5.4 

We can best appreciate the greatness of these South 
American nations by comparing them with our own 
states. Brazil exceeds the whole United States in size 
by an area of 200,000 square miles, or four times the 
state of New York. 

In Argentina, located in the South Temperate Zone, with 
a climate like that of the United States, could be placed all 
that part of our country east of the Mississippi River plus 
the first tier of states west of it. 

Bolivia is comfortably half a dozen times larger than the 
combined areas of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, 
and Delaware. 

Into Chile could be put four Nebraskas. 

Peru would obscure, if placed over them on the map, Cali- 
fornia,. Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Arizona, Utah and 
Idaho. 

Paraguay is only four times bigger than the state of In- 
diana, while little Uruguay could wrap within its limits North 
Dakota. 

Texas could be lost twice in Venezuela and still leave room 
for Kentucky and Tennessee. 



SOUTH AMERICAN REPUBLICS OF TO-DAY 35 

On the globe, Ecuador does not spread like a giant, but it 
could hold all New England, New York and New Jersey. 

Finally, there is Colombia, a land of splendid promise and 
mighty resources, whose nearest port is only 950 miles from 
the nearest port of the United States. This Republic has an 
area as great as that of Germany, France, Holland and Bel- 
gium combined.! 

It is customary to speak with unlimited wonder of 
the wealth and resources of South America. It is 
not to be doubted that the continent has immense 
riches of agricultural product and mineral treas- 
ure waiting to be developed, but the general impres- 
sion produced upon the observant visitor is disap- 
pointing. There are deserts more barren than the 
worst of ours. The tropical forests and vegetation 
are coarse and oppressive. The rain and warmth 
produce luxuriant growths, but tender things, green 
grass and little flowers die in the shadows or are 
scorched in the heat. The table lands of the Andes 
above the timber line and with too high an altitude 
for corn or wheat, the rainless stretches of arid soil, 
the sandy wastes even in the tropics, the swamps and 
miasmic forests, must all be measured when we talk 
of the agricultural possibilities of South America. 
The great broken ranges of the Andes make many of 
the mineral resources almost inaccessible, and the en- 
gineering problems involved in railways are far more 
difficult than with us. But on the other hand, it is 
certain that the true wealth of South America is 
hardly reached as yet, that an efficient population 
would develop in these countries an almost unlimited 
prosperity. And there are parts of South America, 
notably in Brazil and Colombia, and in the wonderful 

* Barrett, " Latin America, The Land of Opportunity," 28. 



36 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

Argentina, which cannot be surpassed anywhere in the 
world. 

I. Argentina. It is impossible to group all the 
South American republics in common commercial gen- 
eralizations. Argentina is in a class by itself. At the 
present time it is far and away the most progressive 
and energetic of the South American countries. It 
is the least South American of them all. Of its 
7,000,000 people a large proportion are foreigners or 
children of foreigners. In 1895 the total number of 
foreigners was 886,395 of whom 492,636 were Ital- 
ians. In 1906, 252,536 immigrants came, of whom 
127,578 were Italians. Buenos Aires with a popula- 
tion of over 1,300,000 has a large element of Italians 
and foreign born of other nations. It is very much 
like a European city. The shops are like foreign shops 
and the air of the place is modern and western. Eng- 
lish financial interests have been heavily concerned 
and the railroads of the country, not a little of the 
agricultural industry, and a considerable part of the 
funds for municipal improvements have been pro- 
vided by British capital. The temperate climate is 
favorable to European immigration and enterprise. 

Already the foreign exports of the Argentine far 
exceed the exports of all the rest of South America 
combined, excepting Brazil. As a commercial country 
it rivals Canada and outranks Japan, China, Mexico, 
Australia and Spain. The country is still thinly set- 
tled, 6 to the square mile as compared with 30 in the 
United States and 558 in England, and its agricultural 
resources are only on the threshold of development. 
There are 18,166 miles of railroad as compared with 
13,270 in Brazil, with new lines building in both coun- 
tries. 



SOUTH AMERICAN REPUBLICS OF TO-DAY 37 

The producing capacity of the country is steadily increas- 
ing, and in cereal production its status is evidenced by the 
fact that as a corn exporter the Argentine Republic took first 
rank in 1908, occupying the place formerly held by the United 
States. In the production of this foodstuff the country ranks 
third, and as a wheat grower fifth. It is first as an exporter 
of frozen meat and second as a shipper of wool. 

In the number of its cattle the Republic holds third place 
among the nations, being ranked with India and the United 
States. Russia and the United States exceed it in number 
of horses, and Australia alone has a greater number of 
sheep. 

The agricultural area under cultivation in 1908, as com- 
pared with 1895, has increased 216 per cent. A large portion 
of this increase is due to the increase in the cultivation of 
wheat, the area of which shows an increase of 195 per cent 
as compared with 1895. 

A recent agricultural and pastoral census of the Republic 
showed live stock in the following quantities: cattle, 29,116,- 
625; horses, 7»53i>376; mules, 465,037; donkeys, 285,088; sheep, 
67,211,754; goats, 3,245,086; and hogs, 1,403,591; representing 
a total valuation of $645,000,000. 

The Republic now occupies first place among the countries 
of the world as a purveyor of frozen meat, though the indus- 
try is as yet practically in its infancy, and with the cheapest and 
most excellent raw material in the world at hand in inex- 
haustible quantities, it will undoubtedly reach proportions 
greatly in excess of the present. This field has attracted the 
attention of United States capitalists, and the packing inter- 
ests are investing large sums in Argentine establishments.^ 

Buenos Aires is the largest city in South Amer- 
ica, the fourth largest in the Western Hemisphere 
and one of the largest in the world. It has all the 
problems of a modern American city, the inevitable 
problems of industrial unrest, and also immorality, 
irreligion, drunkenness, ignorance, with difficulties of 
its own, while it is without the resources of an Amer- 

^ " The Argentine Republic, 1909," 11, 15, 17, 18. 



38 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

ican city, the national traditions and spirit and the 
help of a free Church and adequate schools. Even 
the Roman Catholic Church is doing little to cope 
with the problems. In this city, the size of Philadel- 
phia, there are only forty Roman Catholic churches 
and ten Protestant churches for -both Spanish and 
English services. In Philadelphia I believe there are 
ninety Roman Catholic churches and 690 Protestant 
churches. 

Argentina is growing more rapidly than any other 
South American country. Its population has ad- 
vanced from 1,830,214 in 1869 to 3,851,542 in 1895 
to 5,484,647 in 1905. The city of Buenos Aires, which 
in 1833, when Darwin was there with the " Beagle," 
numbered 60,000, had in 1869, 187,346 population, in 
1895, 663,854, and has now over a million and a 
quarter and is growing at the rate of 100,000 a year. 
The people who are crowding in from Europe are 
not bringing their religion with them. Even if it 
were an adequate religion, demonstrated by its fruits 
in Italy and Spain to be good for national progress 
and individual morality, the immigrants do not retain 
it on the soil of the new land. They discover here, 
as a priest told us, that the priests can no longer wield 
over them the power of the State, and they at once 
hurl off the old respect for the Church and reject 
its priesthood whom they had respected only because 
they feared. A great new nation is taking form here. 
What form is it to take? Are the deepest of all prin- 
ciples, the elements that redeem, to be omitted from 
the forces at work upon it? Here is a population a 
little greater than that of the state of Illinois scat- 
tered over an area of 1,135,840 square miles, one-third 
the area of the whole United States. One-fifth of it 



SOUTH AMERICAN REPUBLICS OF TO-DAY 39 

is concentrated in one city larger than Boston, Bal- 
timore and Denver combined. 

2. Brazil. Larger in size and population than Ar- 
gentina, Brazil comes after it in energy and trade. 
It is the largest and most populous of all the South 
American republics, and it is separated, also, from the 
rest by distinct racial and linguistic peculiarities. 

Its area is officially given as 3,218,130 square miles. 
This is one-half of South America and one-fifth of 
the combined area of North and South America. 
Brazil is larger than the whole of Europe or than 
Australia plus Germany. It is the fourth largest 
country in the world. The country has forty-two sea- 
ports, the greatest river system in the world, almost 
every variety of natural product except some of the 
temperate fruits and grains, and it has resources of 
its own to take the place of these. It is so immense 
that it does not know its own area or condition. Less 
is known of its interior than is known of Africa. 

Brazil represents not only half the area and re- 
sources, but also between one-half and one-third of 
the present population of South America. The cen- 
sus of 1890 gave the population as 14,333,915. The 
best recent books give it as 15,000,000, which is doubt- 
less an underestimate. There are, as yet, no reli- 
able census statistics. The greatest diversity of opin- 
ion prevails in Brazil as to the growth and movement 
of population. The country as a whole can support, 
however, ten or twenty times the present number of 
inhabitants. 

The character of Brazil distinguishes it also from 
the rest of South America. It remained a monarchy 
eighty years longer than the other countries. It re- 
tained slavery twenty years longer than the United 



40 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

States. Its language and predominant racial traits 
are Portuguese, while all the rest of South America 
is Spanish. It has the largest negro element of any 
of the South American states. Of the 15,000,000 
population in 1890, approximately one-third were 
white, one- fourth negro, one-half of mixed blood, 
Indian, negro and white, and the remainder Indians. 
Some say the uncivilized Indians do not exceed 100,- 
000. Hale, in " The South Americans," gives the 
number of Indians as 400,000 and Martin, in 
*' Through Five Republics," gives their number as 
1,300,000. The whites are Portuguese, Spanish, Ital- 
ian, German and English and their descendants of 
mixed blood. The immigration has been largely to 
the southern states of Sao Paulo, Parana, Santa 
Catharina and Rio Grande do Sul. 

Immigration into Brazil attained its maximum in 
1 89 1, when it reached a total of 216,760. In 1895 it 
was 167,618. Since then it has been steadily falling. 

Italy furnishes the greatest number of immigrants and Por- 
tugal comes next. From 1885 to 1905 inclusive the Italian 
immigrants more than doubled the Portuguese, that is to say, 
1,068,032 Italians, against 356,979 Portuguese. 

G«erman immigration is, as shown by the tables, of much 
less importance; from 1893 it only amounted to a few hun- 
dreds yearly; in fact, the number of German immigrants 
entered between 1885 and 1903 did not exceed 79,796, or only 
about one-third of the Spanish immigration. 

The total immigration during the period of 1855-1905 was 
2,374,005.1 

The German element numbers less than half a mil- 
lion. Immigration has affected the Argentine even 
more than Brazil, and there is a negro strain on the 

* The Times, London, South American Supplement, August 30, 1910, 3. 



SOUTH AMERICAN REPUBLICS OF TO-DAY 4 1 

coast of Venezuela, but with these exceptions Brazil is 
distinguished from the rest of South America by its 
immigration and its negro blood. Its people have 
lacked the fanaticism characterizing the peoples on the 
west coast, and until the advent of the host of for- 
eign priests who have poured in since the Spanish 
withdrawal from the Philippines and the disestablish- 
ment of the Church in France, the Protestant mission- 
aries found an open and much neglected field. 

The total imports of Brazil in 1910 were $235,574,- 
837, and the total exports $310,006,438. The imports 
showed an increase over 1909 of nearly $56,000,000, 
and over 1908 of $62,000,000. The impression that 
German trade is displacing British trade is not con- 
firmed in the experience of Brazil this past year, dur- 
ing which British imports increased from $48,241,287 
to $67,061,065, and German imports from $28,007,001 
to $37,455,530. Brazilian exports to Great Britain 
during the same year increased from $49,832,180 to 
$73,440,577, while Brazilian exports to Germany de- 
creased from $48,130,450 to $36,285,755. The total 
exports of Brazil in 19 10 were only about $2,000,000 
more than in 1909, but nearly $95,000,000 more than 
in 1908. The United States is Brazil's best customer, 
taking in 1910 $112,184,068 of Brazil's exports, while 
we ranked third with $30,253,918 of imports. It is 
chiefly coffee and rubber that we buy. In 1910 we 
took $58,808,467 worth of coffee, or more than one- 
half of Brazil's total coffee export, while we took 
$47,409,030 worth of rubber, Great Britain taking 
$57,926,160. Rubber and coffee together made up 
$251,613,589 of Brazil's total exports. Next came 
the mate or Paraguay tea to the value of $9,575,550. 
and then hides $8,626,966, and tobacco $8,048,925. 



42 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

Brazil produces at least four-fifths of the world's sup- 
ply of coffee and about one-half the rubber. 

As regards industrial establishments, a fair estimate places 
them at 3,400 at the close of 1910. The total number of em- 
ployees is given as 160,000, the capitalization at about $220,- 
000,000, with a production of $240,000,000. Fully sixty per 
cent of this capital is invested in factories located in the 
Federal District, and in the States of Rio de Janeiro, Sao 
Paulo and Rio Grande do Sul. Pernambuco has extensive 
sugar industries and cotton mills, and smaller manufacturing 
plants are scattered in various parts of the Republic.^' 

But all such enterprises are still in their infancy in 
Brazil. The total capitalization of all its industrial 
establishments is only equal to the amount of the com- 
mon stock of the Union Pacific Railroad or to one- 
fourth of the capitalization of the United States Steel 
Corporation. The Brazilian people are singularly 
friendly and amiable and they have done more by 
themselves to develop their country than any other 
South American people.^ 

3. Chile. The republic ranking third in enterprise 
and progressiveness, perhaps in proportion to its size 
surpassing most parts of Brazil in these regards, is 
Chile. 

On passing from Brazil to Chile one is impressed 
at once with the contrast which the two countries and 
peoples present. One lies almost wholly within the 
tropics; the other almost wholly in the temperate 
zone. One is as wide as it is long, and the other is 
a thin strip one hundred miles or so broad, stretched 

*" Bulletin, Pan American Union," July, 191 1, 73. 

2 Dr. Gammon, who has long lived among the Brazilians and who 
loves them and is loved by them, has drawn a sympathetic but dis- 
criminating picture of the Brazilian character in " The Evangelical In- 
vasion of Brazil," 41-48. 



SOUTH AMERICAN REPUBLICS OF TO-DAY 43 

along the coast for 2,500 miles. The area of Brazil 
in round numbers is 3,220,000 square miles, and of 
Chile 300,000, about one-eleventh the size of Brazil. 
The wealth of Brazil is agricultural, while of the 750,- 
000 square kilometers of Chile, only 20,000 are cul- 
tivated lands, 100,000 are semi-arid, 200,000 forest, 
and 430,000 sterile. Yet Chile's wealth is in these 
sterile lands, embracing fifty-seven per cent of the 
territory, for there are the great nitrate beds, and the 
varied mineral veins. In Brazil everything is spread 
out, expansive; in Chile, drawn in and compacted. 
Brazil is so big that it does not know itself. Distant 
provinces are like small independent governments. 
Chile is highly centralized, with all its activities fo- 
cussed in the capital and ordered by a small class of 
men. The Brazilian is placid and tranquil ; the Chilean 
energetic and enduring. " By reason or by force," 
is the motto stamped on the Chilean coins. " Progress 
and order " are the words on the flag of Brazil. In 
Brazil the population is a composite mixture with a 
large immigration and a strong African element. In 
Chile it is largely homogeneous, with a negligible im- 
migration and no negro element whatever. The fun- 
damental problems are closely akin in the two coun- 
tries, but the contrasts serve to give an edge to the 
facts. 

Chile is made up climatically of at least three coun- 
tries, (i) There is the southern section, reaching 
roughly from Cape Horn to Valdivia, a land of forest 
and rain and storm. 26.5 per cent of Chile is forest 
land, and of this it is estimated that one-half is arable. 
In this southern section are the great sheep lands of 
Patagonia, Magallanes and Tierra del Fuego. In the 
province of Magallanes or Magellan, there is an area 



44 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

larger than the state of New York, wind-swept and 
fog-covered, but well adapted to sheep pasture. 
There are now miUions of sheep here. Elliott says 
in his book on Chile that in 1905, 75,000 frozen car- 
casses were shipped from Punta Arenas. In 1908 
one plant just east of Punta Arenas froze and 
shipped 196,000 sheep. (2) The real Chile lies be- 
tween Valdivia and Santiago. Four-fifths of the 
population live in this central section. It is the cul- 
tivated section, though there is much waste land even 
here. In the provinces of this section, the population 
varies from 5 to 47 per square kilometer. The aver- 
age would be near 20. It is full of cities and towns 
and villages, readily accessible, railroads running up 
and down and to and fro across it, and all parts not 
reached by rail are possible of an access which would 
be deemed very easy in Bahia or Persia. This sec- 
tion is one long valley, with subordinate valleys, cov- 
ering a region of roughly 500 by 100 miles. The 
southern half of this section, from Valdivia to Con- 
cepcion, is still frontier. The remnants of the Arau- 
canian Indians, the one race whom the Spaniards 
could not conquer, live in the midst of this southern 
half. (3) The rest of Chile is the dry land to the 
north, from Santiago and Valparaiso, latitude 33° to 
Tacna, at the northern boundary, at 18°. At Val- 
divia it rains 172 days a year, and the rainfall is 
2841. 1 m.m. At Santiago it rains 31 days, and the 
rainfall is 264 m.m. At Antofagasta and Iquique it 
never rains at all. The nitrate and borax are piled 
in the open with no fear even of a shower, and the 
shops display no umbrellas. Here in the north, among 
the nitrate officinas and at the copper mines, an un- 
stable population comes and goes, with more money 



SOUTH AMERICAN REPUBLICS OF TO-DAY 45 

than in the south, and with the freedom of opinion of 
such a moving company detached from old moorings. 

The great curse of Chile is alcoholism. In Santi- 
ago, a city with a population of 332,724, it was found 
recently, when the municipality took up the matter, 
that there were 6,000 places where liquor was sold, 
and in Valparaiso, we were told, there was one saloon 
to every twenty-four men. Mr. Akers, in " A History 
of South America, 1 854-1904," says that Valparaiso, 
with a population of 140,000, shows 600 more cases 
of drunkenness reported to the police than in all Lon- 
don, with 5,000,000 souls. Drink has nearly wiped 
out the Indians. The land is cursed with drink, and 
foreigners are manufacturing a good part of it. 

The general hygienic conditions also are appalling. 
Smallpox is practically endemic in Valparaiso and 
Santiago. There were many deaths daily while we 
were in Santiago. Smallpox sufferers would be seen 
on the streets or in street cars, and the pest house 
was in constant use. The conventicles, or tenements, 
in a land where all such houses are only one story 
high and there is no excuse for congestion, are sim- 
ply breeding places for disease and killing grounds 
for httle children. Open sewers run down the uncov- 
ered gutters before the long rows of sunless rooms. 
Seventy-five or eighty per cent of the children die 
under two years of age, and the general rate of mor- 
tality is nearly double that of Europe. Well-informed 
men declare that the population is stationary. The 
census reports, which show a population in 1875 of 
^.075,991, in 1885 of 2,527,300, in 1895 of 2,712,145 
and in 1907 of 3,249,279, do not confirm this impres- 
sion of stagnancy, but the ablest and best-informed 
men recognize the evil of the national suicide through 



46 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

alcoholism and dirt, the uncleanness of the houses and 
the murderous ignorance of the care of children. 
Property under $2,000 is not taxed, and on property 
above that the maximum tax rate is three per mille, 
or about one-tenth of what we pay in many commu- 
nities in the United States. There is none of that 
spirit toward public interests which makes their tax 
bills the most grateful expenditure of many Americans. 

Nevertheless it is a wonderful little republic, pa- 
triotic to the last fibre, with many capable and public- 
spirited men, but without the political or moral spirit 
in the mass of the nation capable of sustaining repre- 
sentative institutions or creating a progressive state. 

These three republics are the leading South Amer- 
. ican nations. It is their trade and activity which make 
up almost the whole commercial life of the continent. 

4. Uruguay. With these three we should group 
Uruguay. It is the smallest republic, and with the 
exception of French and Dutch Guiana, the smallest 
country in South America, and yet it has an area of 
72,000 miles and is larger than England. It attained 
its independence in 1825. It has a population of 
1,112,000, 1,472 miles of railroad and 5,000 miles of 
telegraph. It adjoins the southern state of Brazil, 
Rio Grande do Sul, and there is now railroad connec- 
tion of Montevideo with Porto Alegre, one of the 
two largest cities of Rio Grande do Sul and one of 
its sea ports which is now connected with Sao Paulo 
by the railway. Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, 
was founded in 1726, and has now a population of 
308,000, only a little less than Santiago, Chile. 3,700 
ocean-going ships, of which 1,700 are British, enter 
the port of Montevideo annually. 

Uruguay has had its political irregularities, but the 



SOUTH AMERICAN REPUBLICS OF TO-DAY 47 

country has been very steady in comparison with 
Paraguay, and it enjoys the unique distinction of hav- 
ing its currency on a gold basis with a dollar worth 
102 American cents. The country has neither gold 
nor copper coin of its own, but only paper money and 
very neat i, 2, 3 and 5 cent nickel pieces. Montevideo 
is a semi-Europeanized town with ten banks, five hos- 
pitals, trolley cars, a good park, a mediocre cathedral 
and comparatively few Roman Catholic Churches. It 
has a good air of thrift and substantial prosperity 
and through it passes almost all of Uruguay's trade. 

The Montevideo type was very interesting to us 
after seeing the Brazilian. There was no negro blood, 
and while the policemen and soldiers were Indian or 
Gaucho, there seemed to be little Indian blood in the 
city laborer. The stevedores at the docks might have 
been, as far as appearance went, imported from New 
York. The faces of the women on the streets and in 
the shops were as white as in Paris. One-fifth of the 
population in Uruguay are foreigners. In 1900 there 
were 73,288 Italian and 57,865 Spaniards, The gen- 
eral type is like a mixture of Italian and Spanish. 

The leading products of the country are agricul- 
tural and pastoral, the former including wheat, flour, 
corn, linseed, barley, hay and tobacco, and the latter 
representing a total of about 30,000,000 head of stock, 
embracing approximately 7,000,000 cattle, 20,000,000 
sheep, 600,000 horses, 100,000 hogs and mules and 
goats. Of the great estancias or grass farms devoted 
to the raising of live stock, the Liebig Company owns 
seven in Uruguay for the supply of its beef-extract 
factory at Fray Bentos. 

These first four republics include two-thirds of the 
population, but they carry on seven-eighths of the 



48 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

trade of the continent. Practically all of the immi- 
gration to South America has been to these four 
countries, and it is not without shame that we note 
that the parts of South America farthest from the 
United States are the most prosperous parts. Europe 
has done far more to develop South American trade 
and resources than we have done, and the best life 
of South America to-day is the life which has been 
most touched by northern European influence. 

The total population of South America is less than 
50,000,000, its exports about $950,000,000 gold, and 
its imports about $820,000,000. The great excess of 
exports over imports would be a good sign but for 
the fact that a great deal of the capital engaged in 
producing the exports is foreign capital and that the 
earnings of this capital go out of the country. The 
same thing is true of most of the railway earnings. 
If it were not for Brazil and Argentina and Chile, 
these immense territories would show a commerce less 
than Denmark's alone. Brazil, however, with almost 
the same population as Mexico, though it must be 
acknowledged with far richer resources, has a com- 
merce over four times as much, while Argentina, with 
only half of Mexico's population, has nearly six times 
her commerce. Even poor Persia has an export and 
import trade exceeding that of Paraguay, Ecuador 
and Colombia. There are great resources in South 
America, but they are not easily developed. The 
local populations are not competent to develop them. 
Commercially, the continent is dependent upon energy 
and capital from without. When these are intro- 
duced, however, what has been already done in Argen- 
tina and Brazil shows what may be expected in the 
development of South American resources. Brazil, 



SOUTH AMERICAN REPUBLICS OF TO-DAY 49 

with a population of 20,000,000, exports more than 
China, with a population of more than 400,000,000. 
Argentina, with a population of 7,000,000 has exports 
and imports exceeding by $340,000,000 the total ex- 
ports and imports of Japan, with a populatioin seven 
times that of the Argentine. The exports of Brazil 
and Argentina combined, with a population of 27,000,- 
000, exceed by $222,000,000 the combined exports of 
Japan and China, with a population of 450,000,000, 
seventeen times the combined population of Brazil and 
the Argentine. In proportion to her population, Chile 
far exceeds in her foreign trade both Japan and China. 
If Japan exported as much in proportion to her popu- 
lation as Chile does, Japan's exports would amount, 
not to $228,000,000, but to more than $1,600,000,000, 
while China's would amount, not to $220,000,000, but 
to more than $13,000,000,000. From such facts one 
may gain some impression of the undeveloped trade 
of the Far East, especially when he reminds himself 
that the trade of South America is only beginning. 

Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay may be 
grouped, then, in a class apart from the other repub- 
lics, which as yet are less advanced.^ 

I. Paraguay. Paraguay is one of the oldest and 
yet least advanced of the republics. In 1796, during 
the days of Spanish rule, the first census was taken 
and gave a population of 97,480. In 1857 the official 
census, which Hke most South American census re- 
ports was very unreliable, gave a population of 1,337,- 
439. The further progress of the population was 
stopped by the wars of 1 865-1 870, when Paraguay 

1 The following table, based upon the figures in the Annual Review 
for 191 1 of the " Bulletin of the Pan American Union," will bring out 
the essential facts with regard to the conditions of these countries and 



50 



SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 



was nearly annihilated in her struggles under the in- 
famous Lopez against the combined forces of Brazil, 
Argentina and Uruguay. When the wars were over, 
the official census gave 231,079 inhabitants for the 
whole country, of whom only 28,746 were men. The 
female population has always been in excess of the 
male in Paraguay, with the result that when they out- 
numbered the men four to one, polygamy and immor- 
ality became so common that it was alleged that ninety- 
eight per cent of the children were illegitimate and 
the " women were forced to become laborers and 
bread-winners for the community." It is wonderful 
that the country has recovered as it has from the 
paralyzing rule of Lopez. Cattle products and ex- 
tracts furnish the larger part of the exports. The 
principal crop is mate or Paraguay tea. The mate 



will also indicate the distinction between the progressive and the 
backward lands : 





Area 
Sq. M. 


""s"- 


Imports 


Exports 


Total 
Foreign Trade 


R.R. 

MUe- 
age 


Argentina 

Brazil 

Chile 

Uruguay 


1,139,979 

3,218,130 

291,500 

72,210 


6,989,023 

20,515,000 

3,500,000 

1,112,000 


$341,217,536 
235,574,837 
108,582,279 
42,796,706 


$361,447,274 

310,006,438 

120,021,919 

43,333,124 


$702,664,810 
545,581,27s 
228,604,198 
86,129,830 


18,166 

13,279 

3,573 

1,472 


Total 


4,721,819 


32,116,023 


$728,171,358 


$834,808,755 


$1,562,980,113 


36,490 


Paraguay 

BoUvia 

Peru. 


171,815 
708,195 

679,600 
116,000 
438,436 
393,976 
32,380 


800,000 
2,267,935 

4,500,000 
1,500,000 
4,320,000 
2,685,606 
419,029 


$5,374,837 
18,135,000 

(Est.) 
22,508,021 

8,024,105 
17,025,637 
12,387,551 
10,056,993 


$4,419,497 
29,080,957 

31,144,250 
13,666,371 
17,625,152 
17,948,571 
1,769,330 


$9,794,334 

53,652,271 
21,690,476 
34.650,789 
30,336,122 
11,826,323 


232 
635 

1,656 


Ecuador 

Colombia 

Venezuela 

Panama 


614 

542 
202 


Total 


2,540,402 


16,492,570 


$93,512,144 


$115,654,128 


$209,166,272 


4,231 


Total for So. 
America (ii 
republics) .. 


7,262,221 


48,608,593 


$821,683,502 


$950,462,883 


$i.772,i46»385 


40,271 



SOUTH AMERICAN REPUBLICS OF TO-DAY 5 1 

tree looks not unlike our orange tree crossed with a 
poplar. The leaf and twigs are dried and used for a 
beverage by steeping them in a bowl or gourd and 
sucking the drink through a bombilla or pipe with 
one end consisting of a perforated bulb through which 
the tea is strained. About 17,600,000 pounds are 
raised annually in Paraguay and a large crop is pro- 
duced in southern Brazil. Mate is one of the favorite 
beverages of the southern section of the continent, 
ranking with wine and heavier alcoholic drinks and 
in many sections displacing coffee. 6,000,000 pounds 
of tobacco are produced annually and the soil is ex- 
cellent for cotton. There is an insignificant immi- 
gration. Less than three per cent of the population 
is foreign. 

2. Bolivia. The traveler reaches Bolivia now either 
from Mollendo in Peru by rail to Lake Titacaca, 
thence by boat to Guaqui or by rail from Antofagas- 
ta in Chile. Bolivia and Paraguay are the only re- 
publics in South America with no sea coast, BoHvia 
having been deprived of her seaboard provinces by 
Chile in the war of 1879-1883. We entered from An- 
tofagasta, a city of 32,000, where it never rains, the 
gray overhanging clouds having no meaning, where 
the sand and dust are inches deep in the back streets 
and would be in the main streets were the loose dirt 
not constantly removed, where the surf is always 
breaking over the reef which half protects the landing 
stage, and the brown hills utterly barren are ever lis- 
tening in their dead stillness. Absolutely no food is 
produced here. The town imports everything and ex- 
ports in return nitrates and borax and silver from 
the rich mines in the interior. 

Oruro is 574 miles from Antofagasta and 12,000 



52 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

feet above the sea, and from Oruro it is a nine hours' 
ride of 150 miles on the BoHvian Railway to La Paz. 
Most of the way the snow-covered Bolivian Andes, 
which run up to 25,248 feet, are in view, and Illimani, 
24,635 feet high, stands over La Paz buried deep in 
the unsuspected valley in the great plateau where the 
Spaniards built it in 1548 and named it " Peace," on 
the first anniversary of the battle of Huarina. The 
lovely sight of the city 1,500 feet down from the edge 
of the plateau, surrounded by terraced fields, with 
red-tiled roofs only a little marred as yet by the 
hideous corrugated iron which is an industrial boon 
and an artistic curse, is an abiding memory. 

Railroads now connect La Paz with Chile and Peru 
and the sea coast. Even now, however, she keeps 
much of the archaic and remote and seems more like 
a story-book city than a real one. Only Bogota and 
Cartagena seem as distant from the real life of the 
world. 

La Paz is a city of 70,000 population. The " Geo- 
graphia de la Republica de Bolivia " issued by the Gov- 
ernment for use in public schools gives the population 
of the country, according to the census of 1905, as 
1,737,143, of whom only 7,425 are foreigners. Chile 
has few foreigners compared with Argentina and 
Brazil, but there are 134,524 in Chile out of a popula- 
tion less than double Bolivia's. And of the foreigners 
in Bolivia only 1,441 are European. The census gives 
564,009 people as engaged in agriculture and 399,037 
in general industries. The significant fact, however, 
is the sharply divided racial character of the popula- 
tion. The census states that 903,126 are indigenous 
or Indians, 485,293 mestizos or mixed Indian and 
white blood, and 231,088 white. It is this white ele- 



SOUTH AMERICAN REPUBLICS OF TO-DAY 53 

ment that governs the country. The Indian is little 
better than a serf. 

The most important item of export is tin. Once it 
was silver. For a long time Bolivia stood third among 
the silver-producing countries of the world, the an- 
nual output of its mines being estimated at 10,000,000 
ounces. The Potosi mines from 1566 to 1615 yielded 
the Spanish Crown in taxes alone 3,240,000,000 bolivi- 
anos, and this was but a twenty-per-cent tax, so that 
the value of the output of these mines during fifty 
years must have been over 16,000,000,000 bolivianos.^ 
The silver export now is about $3,000,000 annually, 
and the tin exports are $14,000,000. Gold also was 
once a rich production. Agriculturally the land is 
poor. The Andean plateau is too high for wheat and 
large sections are without rain. 

3. Peru. The " Report on Trade Conditions in Cen- 
tral America and on the West Coast of South Amer- 
ica," issued by the Department of Commerce and 
Labor in Washington, contains excellent descriptions 
of these republics. Of Peru it says : 

In size Peru is the fourth among South American Repub- 
lics, its area falling slightly below that of Bolivia. It covers 
some 695,700 square miles. Of the 4,610,000 enumerated in 
the estimated population, but a small percentage are of white 
blood — about 650,000. The remaining eighty-six per cent are 
negroes, half-breeds, Indians and Asiatics, who have, as a 
rule, reached but a low degree of civilization, and have little 
economic importance except as possible laborers in the de- 
veloping industries of the country. 

The country is one of the few in South America which lie 
wholly within the tropics, the only others being Ecuador, 
Colombia, Venezuela and the Guianas. Its most northerly 
point lies almost on the Equator and its most southerly in 
about latitude 19° south. The climate, however, is tropical 

^ " Bolivia," edited by the International Bureau of the American Re- 
publics, 1904, 96. 



54 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

only in a portion of the territory, for the country is divided 
geographically into three distinct sections. Along the coast 
is a narrow belt of low-lying lands, ranging in elevation from 
sea level to 3,000 or 4,000 feet. Here it scarcely ever rains, 
the climate is intensely dry and hot, and vegetation is found 
only in the valleys of the few rivers which break through 
from the Andes. A second section may be described as the 
highland or plateau region, from 4,000 to 14,000 feet above 
sea level, with many peaks rising to 18,000 or 20,000 or more. 
The climate here is temperate or even cold. There is con- 
siderable rain or snowfall, and the intense barrenness of the 
unwatered portions of the coast gives place to a natural 
growth of grass, shrubs, and even small trees in the more 
favored sections. Beyond this highland region, on the east- 
ern slopes of the Andes, lies a third, the low-lying tropical 
river valleys, ranging in elevation from 1,000 to 6,000 feet, 
with abundant rainfall and uniformly hot climate, and gen- 
erally densely covered with an immense variety of tropical 
trees and other vegetation. 

Until recently only the first of the three regions above de- 
scribed — the low-lying country near the coast — and a few sec- 
tions of the plateau region, have played any important part 
in the economic development of the country. The coast, 
where irrigated, has yielded various important tropical prod- 
ucts, such as sugar, cotton, etc., and the mountains have pro- 
duced minerals, chiefly silver and copper. Little has been 
possible in the development of the inaccessible tropical forest 
region of the east. Now, however, a beginning has been 
made even there, and the valuable rubber, hard woods and 
medicinal vegetable products are being carried to the outside 
world by steamers which ply down the Amazon from Iquitos. 
An idea of the rapidity of this development is given by the 
following figures, showing the exports from Iquitos in the 
past few years (expressed in United States dollars) : 1902, 
$1,405,000; 1903, $2,137,000; 1904, $3,306,000. The indications 
are that the figures for 1905 will reach over $4,000,000. The 
bulk of these exports is rubber, $3,209,000 in 1904.1-' 

One hears the most diverse judgments upon the 
character and condition of the various South Ameri- 

1 " Bolivia," edited by the International Bureau of the American 
Republics, 1904, 41, 42. 



SOUTH AMERICAN REPUBLICS OF TO-DAY 55 

can countries. Men of equal opportunities of ob- 
servation and of equally long experience will directly 
contradict each other. Some told us that Peru was 
the worst and the weakest of all the South American 
governments, except Colombia, and others that the 
country had made great advance and was encourag- 
ingly open to progress. Our own impression, in com- 
paring Bolivia, Peru and Colombia with the other 
South American countries which we saw was that 
they undoubtedly brought up the rear, but that of the 
three, Bolivia was the most backward, Colombia next 
and Peru next. The Indians in Peru, as we judged 
from what little we saw and the much more that we 
heard, were inferior to the Indians in Bolivia and 
worse treated both by people and government ; but in 
business and trade, in educational institutions, for 
which Peru had imported a number of American di- 
rectors, in governmental administration and in its cur- 
rency, Peru is distinctly in advance. We could not 
discover that there was much difference between the 
two countries in the character and influence of the 
Roman Catholic Church or in the irreligiousness of 
the men who in both lands either ignore or only nom- 
inally support an institution in which they do not 
believe. 

4. Ecuador. The trade report just quoted says 
that 

Ecuador and Colombia together may be regarded as among 
the most backward of the South American States. Their re- 
sources are undeveloped, their surplus products for export 
are far below the proportion which might be expected from 
their population, and their imports are correspondingly in- 
significant. Their importance in the commercial world lies 
rather in the possibility of future development than in their 
present status. Ecuador, with an area of 116,000 square miles 



56 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

and a population of 1,500,000 (12.9 per square mile), exported 
but $11,520,000 worth of goods in 1904 ($7.68 per capita) and 
imported to the value of only $7,670,000 ($5.11 per capita). ^ 

The reasons for Ecuador's backwardness are given 
as the unhealthfulness of the port of Guayaquil, noto- 
rious for its unsanitary condition as a pest hole of 
yellow fever, the vexatious government regulations 
and the revolutionary spirit. Instead of improving 
the conditions, the republic absorbed the appropria- 
tions for the Guayaquil and Quito and Machala water- 
works, the parks in Quito, and public roads for the 
payment of current expenses of administration. Trade 
conditions have improved slightly since 1904, as the 
table on page 50 indicates. Cocoa is the most im- 
portant export. 6,400,000 pounds were shipped in 
1908, of which the United States took about one-sixth. 
The total export of cocoa in 1910 was $7,896,057. 
$1,258,575 worth of Panama hats were exported. 
40,000,000 pounds of rice are produced annually, but 
this is not enough to meet the demands of the home 
market. 

5. Colombia. Colombia is the South American Per- 
sia without Persia's excuse. It is a rich and fertile 
country, not a desert. There is scarcely anything that 
it cannot produce from the fruits of the tropics to 
the grains of the temperate zones. It has thousands 
of square miles of low-lying forests and pastures, 
capable of raising cattle for the Central American 
and West Indian markets, and bananas for the 
United States. It has thousands of square miles of 
higher valleys and mountain plateaus, thousands of 
feet high, where it is perpetual spring time. No coun- 

^ " Bolivia," edited by the International Bureau of the American 
Republics, 1904, 63. 



SOUTH AMERICAN REPUBLICS OF TO-DAY 57 

try can produce better coffee and cocoa. It has the 
richest emerald mines in the world. Its total product 
of gold has been £127,800,000. Asphalt, rubber, salt, 
coal, iron, and all that is necessary for the industrial 
independence of the country and for a large export 
trade are found in abundance. The whole country 
could be a garden. Great river systems provide means 
of communication and highways for trade. Steam- 
boats on the Magdalena River can run from the sea 
to within eighty miles' of the capital and there are 
other navigable streams tributary to the Magdalena 
or running into the Orinoco, the Amazon, the Pacific 
Ocean or the Caribbean Sea. 

And yet this rich country is one of the most back- 
ward and decrepit nations in the world. She has a 
few little railroads, the longest of them only ninety- 
three miles, and all of these were built and many 
are owned by foreigners. She has only three or four 
highways, and two of them, the most important of all, 
from Cambao and Honda to Facatativa, are falling 
into ruin. One of them, the road from Honda, has 
already fallen. It never was a real road, but simply 
a mountain trail, paved in parts, for the use of. sad- 
dle horses and pack mules. For centuries this was 
the only road to the capital for all imports and for 
the people of most of the country. It was probably 
a better road a century ago than it is to-day, when 
the traveler finds it only a series of rocky inclines, 
the stone pavements broken up and the road for the 
fifty-six miles of its length, until it joins the Cambao 
road, worse even than any road in Persia. There is 
an automobile road built by Reyes as one of his spec- 
tacular achievements covering over his private loot- 
ing, running eighty miles north of Bogota over the 



58 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

plain, but the country can be said to be without roads, 
more without them than Persia or Korea were ten 
years ago. 

How backward Colombia is may be seen by a com- 
parison with Chile, a country of only four-fifths of 
Colombia's population. 

The following table will illustrate the difference : 

Colombia Chile 

Area 450,000 sq. miles 307,620 

Population 4,320,000 3,500,000 

Railroads 614 miles 3,573 

Exports $17,625,152 $120,021,919 

Imports $17,025,637 $108,582,279 

The comparison might be extended further if Co- 
lombia had any reliable statistics. 

The cause of Colombia's special backwardness is 
not the character of the great mass of the people. 
They are a willing, industrious, cordial people. We 
met no people in South America more hearty and 
amiable. One never asks help in vain. In some of the 
South American lands there is a great deal of the 
dourishness of the Indian. There is much Indian 
blood in the Colombian, but it is a good-hearted, 
friendly blood. The moral conditions are the same as 
elsewhere in South America. The control of mar- 
riage by the Roman Catholic Church and the use of 
this control by the priests as a source of income to the 
Church have resulted, as the priests themselves admit, 
in a failure on the part of great masses of the popula- 
tion to get married. Men and women live together 
with no marriage ceremony. Sometimes the relation- 
ship is maintained, but the very nature of it makes 
fidelity too rare. In spite of the good nature of the 
people there is a great deal of want and suffering. In 



SOUTH AMERICAN REPUBLICS OF TO-DAY 59 

some sections goitre is almost universal, and there is 
the same lack of medical provision which is found in 
other South American lands. In the Bogota Hospi- 
tal, crowded so full with its 1,000 patients that some 
of them were laid on mattresses on the floor, we were 
informed that the death rate both in Bogota and in 
the country was abnormally high — how high the doc- 
tors disagreed — and that in Bogota with 100,000 peo- 
ple there were 180 doctors and 570 in the whole of 
Colombia, or one to each 6,000, as against one to each 
600 in the United States. In Colombia also we saw 
more poverty and suffering than anywhere else in 
South America. In Honda alone one afternoon more 
beggars came to us as we sat under a tree in front of 
the hotel after the ride down from Bogota, than we 
had seen in all the rest of our trip. Colombia is the 
South American land most praised by the Roman 
Catholic Church for its fidelity. The Church has here 
a unique control and here least is done for the suffer- 
ing and the needy. We did not hear of an institution 
of any kind for the blind, for the cripple, for the 
aged. There are leper asylums, but the State has 
founded them. The women of Colombia are even 
more burdened than those of other countries. We 
saw women with pick and shovel working on the 
highway. The porter who came to take our bags to 
the station in Bogota was a woman. You may see 
women with week-old babies folded in their breasts, 
staggering along under a sack of coffee weighing 150 
lbs. or a load of merchandise. The butchers in the 
market in Bogota were women. And I think one could 
find no sadder faces than those of the women in the 
Bogota Hospital. The curse of any land, guilty of un- 
cleanness and untruth, is bound to fall heaviest on its 



60 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

best hearts, the hearts of the women. But Colombia 
is not behind the other South American countries be- 
cause the people are more immoral or more unworthy. 
They are probably of about the same morality and 
they are certainly more industrious and more kindly 
and more eager than many of the others. 

The cause of Colombia's special backwardness is two- 
fold. First, is the character of the governing class. 
No country unless it has been Venezuela or Paraguay, 
has been more cursed by politicians, men who were 
concerned only to hold office, to have hands on the 
reins of government, but who did not use office for any 
public service or handle the reins of government to 
guide the nation into better things. Bogota is full of 
people who live on the state and talk politics and play 
at life. But politics to them means holding office and 
drawing salary and talking of the nation and its 
honor. It does not mean the development of its re- 
sources, the improvement of its communications, the 
education of its children, the progress of its indus- 
tries. Each other South American country has had 
its men of the Bogota stamp, but contact with the 
outside world, the incoming of foreign capital, truer 
ideals of education, have crowded these men aside or 
checked them by the creation of another class who 
are engaged in the real work of the world, in produc- 
ing wealth and promoting progress. For a time Co- 
lombia made real progress and there seemed to be 
ground for hope that the better days had come, but the 
treason of Nunez to liberal ideas, as the people regard 
it, in 1886 was the end of the time of advance, and the 
revival under Reyes now appears to have been only a 
cover for his more mercenary treachery. 

The other great cause of the special backwardness 



SOUTH AMERICAN REPUBLICS OF TO-DAY 6l 

of Colombia is the dominance of the Roman Catholic 
Church, which holds the land in a grasp which she 
has been obliged to relax in the other South Ameri- 
can countries. In the first half of the last century the 
State asserted for itself a large freedom. It took over 
many of the great properties which the Church had ac- 
quired by its political character and put them to public 
uses. In Bogota the postoffice, some of the govern- 
ment buildings, the public printing office, the medical 
school and the hospital are all old convents. In 1888 
the Church came back into power through a concordat 
with the State. Since Ecuador threw off the domina- 
tion of the Church there is not one South American 
country where the influence of Rome is so powerful 
as in Colombia. The archbishop and the Papal dele- 
gate in Bogota are the most conspicuous figures after 
the President. The Papal delegate is the head of the 
diplomatic corps, and it is said by many that there is 
nothing which the Church desires that it cannot do. 
The Church controls education, and while the Consti- 
tution proclaims religious liberty, the Church exer- 
cises its authority to see that as far as it can order 
matters the liberty shall not be exercised by the peo- 
ple. The mission school for boys in Bogota was 
nearly wrecked in 1909, though its prospects seemed 
brighter than for some years, by the reissuance of a 
letter by the archbishop, first sent out ten years ago, 
in which he warned the people against the heretics 
who had come into the country, naming specifically 
the Presbyterians, and after setting forth the iniquity 
and deceit of their doctrines declared: 

In consequence whereof and by virtue of our authority we 
command you (the curate) to communicate and explain with 
diligence the following points : 



62 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

I. All persons incur the penalty of the excommunion " latae 
sententiae" exercised only by the Roman Pontiff, who are 
apostates from the Christian faith, and each and every here- 
tic, whatever the name by which he designates his faith, or 
the sect to which he belongs, and all persons who believe, har- 
bor or favor or are in general their defenders, as also schis- 
matics and those who pertinaciously separate themselves and 
deviate from obedience to the Roman Pontiff. 

3. No Catholic may, without rendering himself liable to 
mortal sin, and without incurring the other penalties imposed 
by the Church, send his sons or daughters or dependents to or 
himself attend personally any of the institutions or schools 
founded in this city and known as the American School for 
Boys as well as that for Girls ; nor may he give aid or favor 
to the aforesaid educational plants. 

5. It is a most serious offense for any Catholic to co- 
operate in or attend the meetings for Protestant worship, 
funerals, etc., whether within or without the Church (Prot- 
estant). 

6. Those of the faithful who receive or have in their pos- 
session leaflets, tracts, loose sheets, or periodicals such as the 
" Evangelista Colombiana," " El Progreso " of N. Y. City, 
Bibles or books of whatever other kind, whether printed 
within or without the Republic (Colombian), which are sold 
or distributed by the Protestant missionaries or by their 
agents or by other booksellers, are absolutely obliged to de- 
liver such books to their parish priest or to surrender them 
to the ecclesiastical tribunal of the Archbishopric. 

This circular shall be read in all churches during mass for 
three consecutive Sundays for the full understanding of the 
faithful. 

(Signed) BERNARDO, 

Archbishop of Bogota. 

Read and explain this circular to the people at such times 
as there may be present the greatest number of persons, and 
as many times as may be necessary for all the faithful to ap- 
appreciate its content. 

By order of the prelate, 

CARLOS CORTEZ LEE, Sec'y. 



SOUTH AMERICAN REPUBLICS OF TO-DAY 63 

The Roman Church in Colombia has been a reac- 
tionary and obscurantist influence for centuries. At 
Cartagena, the best port of Colombia and the most 
picturesque city we saw, was the seat of the Inquisi- 
tion where it is said 400,000 were condemned to death, 
and while that terror has long since passed away, the 
shadow of the Church as a great repressive, deaden- 
ing power has remained. The people have not been 
taught. Peonage has endured and in a modified form 
been sanctioned by law. The machinery of the 
Church, it is charged, has been used in the interest of 
personal and commercial politics. In one word, the 
fact is that one of the best countries and peoples in 
South America, and the one most docile to the Church 
and most under its control, is the most backward and 
destitute and pitiful. 

6. Venezuela, Venezuela is another of the South 
American republics with an immense area and rich 
resources shamefully neglected through incompetence 
of government. The 1904 volume on Venezuela pub- 
lished by the Bureau of American Republics presents 
an interesting table and comments upon it : 

Area sq. kilo- Inhabitants per 

CotJNTRY meters Population sq. kilometer 

Venezuela 1,552,741 2,633,671 1.69 

Germany 540,700 56,367,178 104 

France 536,400 38, 961, 945 74 

Italy 286,600 32,475,253 113 

Netherlands 33, 100 5,263,269 159 

Belgium 29,450 6,799,999 231 

Switzerland 4i,340 3,315,443 80 

Ireland 85,150 4,456,546 53 

1,552,740 147,639,631 95.14 

The above table shows that the area of Venezuela aggre- 
gates that of the seven European countries therein consid- 



64 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

ered, although its population is fifty-five times less than their 
total population. This shows that Venezuela's territory can 
easily contain one hundred and fifty million (150,000,000) 
inhabitants, which would give but 96.60 inhabitants to the 
square kilometer. 

Venezuela's area, compared with that of Belgium, is fifty- 
two times larger than the latter's, and to have the latter's 
density of population it would have to be peopled by three 
hundred and fifty-eight million inhabitants.'^ 

It is a land which might support if not the population 
of Belgium yet a vastly greater population than that 
of the whole of South America. Japan is not a richer 
country, and yet Japan, which is one-third the size of 
Venezuela, sustains nearly twenty times its popula- 
tion. The land 

abounds in natural resources. The fluvial system penetrates 
the most remote points of her territories. The vast plains, 
covered with verdure the entire year, furnish bountiful sub- 
sistence to the herds of cattle. The mountain ranges are 
covered with forests, from which are obtained rare and pre- 
cious woods, while the valleys and table-lands are rich in 
varieties of cereals and fruits which grow in abundance. 
The mines, containing valuable minerals, are, for the most 
part, undeveloped and open for investments. The principal 
exports for the first half of the fiscal year 1907-8 were; 
coffee, 58,489,200 pounds; cacao, 22,598,021 pounds; divi-divi, 
8,714,255 pounds; cattle and asphalt. Rubber shipments ag- 
gregated 869,591 pounds, and ox-hides and goat-skins to- 
gether, 2,481,298 pounds.2 

7. Panama. The youngest of the South American 
republics is Panama. It has an area of 32,380 square 
miles, nearly equal to that of the state of Maine, and 
a population of 361,000 or ii.i per square mile, less 
than one-half the population per square mile of the 
United States of America. 

* " Venezuela, 1904," 16. 
2 Ibid., 9, 10. 



SOUTH AMERICAN REPUBLICS OF TO-DAY 65 

Two mountain chains traverse the territory of the repub- 
lic, inclosing various valleys and plains which afford excellent 
pasturage for cattle and in which all the products of the 
tropical zone are raised. The slopes of the mountains are 
covered with extensive forests. 

Among the products for export, bananas, cacao, indigo, 
tobacco, sugar cane, India rubber, vegetable ivory, turtle 
shells, pearls and mahogany are the most important. 

The railroad from Colon to Panama, forty-seven miles in 
length, is still the transportation route of the Panama 
Isthmus.i 

The Panama republic owes its being, of course, 
to the United States. Without our intervention and 
support the republic could not have maintained its ex- 
istence. It is a very toy type of republic, with appall- 
ing moral, intellectual, and political needs, and with a 
right to claim from us help to become in reality the 
republic we have made it in name. The canal, of 
course, is not in the republic, but on the canal zone, 
which has been ceded to the United States, and where 
at present there are about 7,000 Americans, including 
women and children and about 27,000 laborers, of 
whom three-fourths are West Indian negroes and 
the rest Spaniards and Italians. The Gallegos Span- 
iards from northern Spain are said to be the best 
labor with the Italians next and the negroes last. 

South American Cities. The South American lands 
more than any other countries in the world are built 
around and governed by cities. As we have seen, the 
early settlers, instead of spreading over the country 
and taking farms and forming village communities as 
was done in North America, at once established cities. 
Every adelantado or frontier commander was re- 
quired to found at least three towns. In North 

* " Panama, 19091" 3» 8. 



66 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

America the collisions with the Indians were over 
land. In South America they were over wealth and 
labor. The North American wanted a place to work 
for himself. The South American wanted the Indian 
to work for him. The Spaniard and Portuguese had 
been accustomed to city life and city government at 
home, and he knew no other form of association for 
the new land. At once, accordingly, he founded cities 
wherever he went, and these are the great cities of 
South America to-day, Buenos Aires, Rio, Lima, 
Santiago, Valparaiso, Bogota, Quito, Sao Paulo, 
Bahia, Pernambuco, Montevideo, La Paz, Caracas, 
Asuncion. These cities are the central points of Hfe 
and influence. There are many smaller cities, but 
South America is not as Asia and Europe and North 
America are — a land of towns, villages and separate 
farmhouses. More than one-seventh of the popula- 
tion of Chile is in two cities, and a third of it in the 
fifty cities and towns of over 5,000 population. In 
the Argentine, one-fourth of the population is in 
Buenos Aires, the largest city in the world south of 
the Equator. The small population of each land gives 
to its one or two largest cities a predominant in- 
fluence. Almost everything centers in the capital. 
Such a condition is not wholesome. These cities suck 
in the wealth of the nation, beautifying themselves 
with revenues needed for the development of the na- 
tion's wider interests, and they absorb the energy of 
government which should be national and not urban. 
They have no real independent municipal life but are 
administered by the central government which leaves 
them scarcely any communal autonomy. Senor Bravo, 
one of the leading jurists of Chile, in his commen- 
taries on the Law of Municipal Organization refers 



SOUTH AMERICAN REPUBLICS OF TO-DAY d'] 

to the fact and the reason for it in Chile, and what he 
says is appHcable elsewhere: 

In Chile, as in all the old Spanish colonies, the commune 
was unknown until established by law. From the earliest 
period of the conquest the system of encomiendas prevailed 
in our country, by virtue of which the conquerors divided 
among themselves the land and the people inhabiting it, there- 
by making impossible those groupings of small proprietors 
and of local interests which elsewhere formed the base or 
were the actuating cause of the municipality. Nor was the 
period of political and social reconstruction which followed 
independence the most appropriate for promoting the organ- 
ization of the commune, and the isolated efforts made in this 
direction were unfruitful. The habits and unprogressive cus- 
toms of the colonial period continued under the new regime.^ 

In recent years, however, some of the capital cities 
have been achieving some measure of real municipal 
government, and the domination of the cities by the 
central governments has not been without its advan- 
tages to the cities, even if these advantages have been 
purchased at the cost of the country districts. Cities 
like Rio and Buenos Aires and Santiago have been 
made beautiful cities and the hygienic conditions, once 
nearly as deadly in some of them as they are now in 
Guayaquil, have been greatly improved. In this mat- 
ter of sanitation and hygiene the South American 
countries have made real progress and many of their 
cities inherited a character and distinctive beauty 
from the past to which the present has often made 
great additions. But even so there is an appalling 
amount of work still to be done to make living whole- 
some in some of the cities whose climatic conditions 
are almost ideal. 

^ Quoted in " Municipal Organizations in Latin America, Santiago de 
Chile," 441. 



68 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

Taxation. The burden of taxation In the South 
American states is very uneven. In Chile it is ex- 
ceedingly light, as we have seen. In Argentina it is 
heavier. In Buenos Aires there are imposts upon 
street cars, carriages, dogs, theatres, bill boards, bil- 
liard-halls, telegraph and telephone messages, the use 
of spaces under city streets, on provisions and wagons 
conveying them about the city, peddlers, hotels, cel- 
lars, etc. But in Brazil the burden is heaviest of all. 
There are large import duties and the internal rev- 
enue levies are almost crushing to industry. Every- 
thing is taxed. Even the poor farmer bringing his 
goods to market is taxed at the city gate or in the 
market. Prices in Brazil and Argentina, accordingly, 
are higher than anywhere else in South America and 
many forms of trade are intolerably burdened. In 
Brazil especially a wise and frugal and honest politi- 
cal administration would undoubtedly result in such 
an expansion of industry and commerce as would 
double the prosperity of the land. 

Foreign Trade. It is in large part because of the 
woeful undevelopment of indigenous manufacture 
that the imports of South America are so great. She 
exports agricultural and mineral products and imports 
all else, and some of the South American countries 
have to import food stuffs also, although there is not 
one of them that could not amply supply a popula- 
tion many times as great as its own. 

The greatest trade opportunity of the United States 
is in Latin America. In the first eight months of the 
government fiscal year 1909-10 our exports to Asia 
were $72,000,000, a loss of $2,000,000 as compared 
with the preceding year, while our trade with the rest 
of the Western Hemisphere was $300,000,000, a gain 



SOUTH AMERICAN REPUBLICS OF TO-DAY 69 

of $6o,CMDo,ooo. Our trade with Porto Rico was 
greater than our trade with either China or Japan, 
and our trade with Cuba exceeded our trade with 
China and Japan combined. In 1899 ^^^ exports to 
South America were $15,000,000 less than to Asia, 
but in 1909 they were $10,000,000 greater. The Hon. 
John Barrett has stated vividly the facts as to the 
extent of South America's trade and our inadequate 
but increasing share in it : 

South America proper conducted an average foreign trade 
amounting to $1,513,415,000, of which the share of the United 
States in 1907 was only $233,293,300, including both exports 
and imports — barely one-seventh. Analyzing further these 
figures for the United States, we discover that South America 
sold to us products to the value of $147,680,000 and bought 
from us only $85,612,400. This gives a balance against us of 
practically $60,000,000. 

Another comparison shows how far behind we are in the 
race with the rest of the world. South America purchased 
from other nations products valued at $660,930,000, of which 
the United States furnished $85,612,400, or barely one-eighth, 
and yet the more we study the South American field the 
more we appreciate that the United States could supply the 
greater portion of its imports. Correspondingly, we do not 
give South America as great a market for her products as 
we ought, for, of her total exports, amounting to $852,485,000, 
the United States purchased only $147,680,900, or approxi- 
mately one-sixth. 

Having j^fiven these figures, some of which are averages, 
covering a period of years, I now desire to point out, through 
additional figures, another feature of the situation which is 
most encouraging. . . . 

The entire commerce, exports and imports, between the 
United States and the countries to the south of her amounted 
in 1897, ten years ago, to $252,427,798. Three years later, in 
1900, this had grown to $324,680,368. Five years more, in 
1905, it had expanded to $517,477,368; while two years later, 
1907, we are gratified to note that it has reached the splendid 
total of $587,194,945- It is thus seen that in ten years our 



70 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

trade with Latin America has increased by the vast sum of 
$335,000,000, or has more than doubled. Certainly this is a 
record of which our country can be proud, and yet it is only 
a beginning of possibilities. 

Inasmuch as the total foreign commerce of Latin America 
for 1907 was over $2,000,000,000, it can be seen that the United 
States is far from having her share. The great point is that 
if the United States, under present conditions and with the 
present lack of interest, can conduct a trade with Latin 
America of nearly $600,000,000 per annum, it is sure to do a 
business of $1,000,000,000 in the near future, after our manu- 
facturing and agricultural interests fully realize the value of 
the opportunity and put forth their best energies to 
control it.i 

Immigration. This expansion of trade and pros- 
perity in South America is proportionate to the intro- 
duction of energy and capacity and character from 
without. South American progress is not indigenous. 
It is* imported. Those countries which have received 
no immigration are almost as stagnant now as they 
have been for generations. The northern and west- 
ern nations, i. e., from Venezuela around to Bolivia, 
are the backward nations. There are no railroads, 
no banks, no great business interests in all these re- 
publics which do not depend somewhere upon foreign 
character and ability. And even in Chile foreign en- 
terprise and integrity are employed in every great 
commercial enterprise. Even on the ships of the 
Chilean corporation, the Compania Sud-Americano de 
Vapores, all the captains and responsible officers are 
foreign. And it is the scarcity of this foreign ele- 
ment in all these lands which accounts for their back- 
wardness. There has been no immigration to men- 
tion to any but four of the republics and these four 
have been already described as the foremost nations, 

* Barrett, " Latin America, the Land of Opportunity," 69-73. 



SOUTH AMERICAN REPUBLICS OF TO-DAY 7 1 

separated from the rest. In Venezuela, in 1894, the 
latest reliable figures show that there were 44,129 
foreign residents, of whom 13,179 were Spaniards, 
11,081 Colombians, 6,154 British, 3,179 Italians, 2,545 
French, 962 Germans, 58 North Americans. In BoU- 
via there are only 1,441 Europeans. In Peru about 
70,000 people enter the country annually and 60,000 
leave, a net gain of 10,000 per annum, but few of 
them are Europeans. And yet it is the European and 
American element that is to be credited with almost 
all of Peru's commercial and industrial advancement. 
Paraguay, which claims to be able to support a. popu- 
lation of 68,000,000 and has an estimated population 
of 800,000, reports only 4,000 Europeans, although it 
encourages immigration. Contrast with these lands 
the four more prosperous states. Brazil received 76,- 
292 colonists in 1901, while the total number who 
came from 1855 to 1901 was 2,023,693. The number 
of immigrants is less now than it was twenty years 
ago. In 1 89 1, due in part to a crisis in the Argentine 
which lessened the immigration there, 277,808 people 
came to Brazil, of whom 116,000 were Italians. The 
" Statesman's Year Book " estimates that there are 
1,000,000 Germans in Brazil, which is probably an 
overestimate. Sao Paulo is almost a foreign city, and 
the result is seen in its growth from 28,000 in 1872 to 
64,000 in 1890, to 239,000 in 1900. In Chile the 
number of Germans and English in 1907 was over 
20,000, with as many Spaniards, and representatives 
of almost every other European nationality. The Ar- 
gentine, which is the South American wonderland in 
wealth and development, is predominantly foreign. 
Even the Spanish element has been almost overmas- 
tered by the Italian, and the Italian stock has been a 



72 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

good one. Argentina is becoming a new Italy, while 
British and German capital, and with the capital men 
to supervise it, have been poured in like water. It is 
estimated that Great Britain has £280,732,626 in- 
vested in Argentina. Europe as a whole has $3,500,- 
000,000 invested in South America.^ It is the new 
blood and character from without which account for 
the progress which South America is making. Even 
in Chile, where it may seem to be Chilean, the men 
who are leading the nation bear names that show their 
British or German ancestry. With us it is now the 
native stock that dominates and improves the im- 
ported blood. In South America the imported blood 
dominates and improves the native stock. The gov- 
erning class is European rather than American. 
Beneath this governing class, of course, is the great 
body of people with the heavier strain of native blood, 
uneducated, unawakened. 

Causes of South American Backwardness. It is this 
heavy strain of Indian blood, and of negro blood as 
well in Brazil, and the unfavorable climatic conditions 
of South America which are usually charged with the 
responsibility for the backwardness of South America. 

But more can be made of the climate than is war- 
ranted, for Argentina and Chile and Uruguay lie in 
the temperate zone. Chile, instead of being a killing 
ground for little children, should be one of the most 
beautiful countries in the world. Its valleys and vil- 
lages should make it a second Switzerland. The 
Argentine is a great prairie like our own or the Cana- 
dian west. The west coast also above Chile, while 
tropical, is cooled by the Humboldt or Peruvian cur- 

* Pepper, " Conciliation through Commerce and Industry in South 
America," 9. 



SOUTH AMERICAN REPUBLICS OF TO-DAY 73 

rent, and the table-lands, including Colombia and 
Ecuador, cannot be called tropical, while Brazil is a 
plateau outside of the low Amazon basin. In the 
state of Rio, within one hundred miles of the Atlantic, 
is the mountain of Itatiaya higher than any mountain 
in the United States east of the Rockies, and from 
Bahia southwards a journey of fifty miles inland lifts 
one out of the tropical air. South America can- 
not plead her climatic or physical conditions as excuse 
for her moral or political problems or her industrial 
backwardness. These conditions are advantageous. A 
different people would have worked out a far differ- 
ent result. As Charles Darwin wrote in his '' Nat- 
uralist's Voyage in the Beagle," chapter xix, after his 
memorable visit to South America in 1832-35, con- 
trasting Australia even in 1836 with South America: 
" At last we anchored within Sydney Cove. We 
found the little basin occupied by many large ships 
and surrounded by warehouses. In the evening I 
walked through the town and returned full of ad- 
miration at the whole scene. It is a most magnificent 
testimony to the power of the British nation. Here, 
in a less promising country, scores of years have done 
many times more than an equal number of centuries 
have effected in South America." 

The fundamental trouble in South America is eth- 
ical. The people of South America have their noble 
qualities as truly and as conspicuously as any other 
people. And there are among them, as among all 
peoples, all types of character. Speaking generally, 
they are warm-hearted, courteous, friendly, kindly to 
children, respectful to religious things, patriotic to 
the very soul ; but the tone, the vigor, the moral bot- 
tom, the hard veracity, the indomitable purpose, 



74 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

the energy, the directness, the integrity of the Teu- 
tonic peoples are lacking in them. Some of the 
South American population, like the Chileans, the 
Bolivians and the Peruvians are more somber and 
reserved, comparatively, than others. Think of the 
deep shadows of their past experiences! But, in 
general, what Dr. Howell, who has lived long among 
the Brazilians, says of them is true of the South 
American type : 

The Brazilian people are in general hospitable, generous, 
charitable, gay, courteous, communicative, quick at learning, 
rather fond of show, somewhat ceremonious and proud, 
rather inclined to look down on labor and laborers, but with 
a remarkable suavity and a native politeness which is in gen- 
eral in the lowest as in the highest classes. Though not as 
excitable as the Spanish, there is still a strong element of 
jealousy in their disposition, and a tendency to vindictiveness. 

Physically the typical Brazilian is small of stature, with 
. . . nervous and bilious temperament, bloodless and sallow 
complexion, and a generally emaciated and wornout look. 
. . . The general loose ideas in regard to the marriage rela- 
tion, together with the universally immoral lives even of the 
priests . . . have undermined the physical health of the peo- 
ple, while sowing the seeds of disease which more and more 
incapacitate them for the work yet to be done in developing 
the immense resources of this magnificent country. 

Intellectually, even among the better educated, there is an 
apathy which is manifest in science, politics and religion. 
Rome has persistently repressed speculation and independence 
of thought till now the people are intellectual sluggards. Be- 
cause of this apathy there is the utmost indifference in most 
men concerning national interests and policies. 

Lack of conscientiousness is said to be the leading moral 
defect of the Brazilians, while reverence for ecclesiastical 
tradition is an equal obstacle. This latter characteristic not 
only stands in the way of their accepting a new and true 
view of life, but is equally unfortunate in its economical 
effect. 1' 

* Quoted in " Protestant Missions in South America," 64f. 



SOUTH AMERICAN REPUBLICS OF TO-DAY 75 

This judgment on the moral need of South Amer- 
ica is the judgment of a friend, not a foe. Those 
who express it have no Pharisaic contentment with 
conditions in Europe or the United States. Whoever 
will point out and help us to correct our faults is wel- 
comed among us. Those who love South America 
best are equally fearless in pointing out her needs. 

In the best general book we have on the eastern 
countries of South America, Mr. Hale says: 

The Latin American man has no conception of chastity. 
On one point our inheritance of revolt from the Roman 
Catholic Church has made us superior to them. We, as a 
people, have what we style the New England conscience, or 
what with more dignity should be called a moral sense; this 
is eminently self-sustaining in all our struggles for improve- 
ment and reform. A moral sense has never been more than 
feebly developed in South America, and where it makes it- 
self felt it has become a force artistic or ethical rather than 
religious or moral. . . .^ 

Ethically speaking, there is a tone of immorality running 
through all South American life. In diplomacy it may be 
called finesse, and the bluntly spoken word, which we fondly 
think is the bond of an American or an Englishman, is 
hedged by the blossom of verbiage so characteristic of the 
Romance tongue. I have heard repeated testimony to the 
high standard of their financial morality; bankruptcy is less 
frequent than with us and the long credits granted by Eng- 
lish and German houses prove the trustworthiness of ordi- 
nary business men. I know of one case on the Orinoco where 
an EngHshman once in six months meets a trader from the 
interior; he has no real security for his sales, yet if at the 
end of the first half-year the previous bill is unpaid, because 
the trader could not reach Ciudad Bolivar, the Englishman 
does not worry at all; he knows that when the year expires 
the money will be forthcoming, penny for penny. This 
method of long credits frightens the American Yankee and 
is an obstacle to trade which otherwise might grow into 
prosperous proportions. 

* Hale, " The South Americans," 6. 



76 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

Another so-called manifestation of immorality is in their 
sexual relations. I must, however, come to the defense of 
the South American woman. I have had an intimate ac- 
quaintance in Latin American homes for years, and nowhere 
in the world have I seen purer domesticity, nowhere is there 
greater domestic service, a sincerer love of children or an 
honester attempt to lead the life which according to their 
interpretation God intended them to lead. In Buenos Aires 
and Rio there is a fast set, as there is in New York and 
Paris, and the idle rich make opportunity for indulgence just 
as they do everywhere. Our ways may not be their ways, 
nor can an Anglo-Saxon always understand the domestic 
ambition of the Latin; but it is a shocking error to withhold 
just praise from a pure-minded sex at the other side of the 
equator. South American women have asked me why there 
were so many divorces in the United States; with them mar- 
riage is a sacrament and a social obligation, and I feel con- 
vinced that they preserve their virtue and happiness as well 
as we do. 

In the lower classes conditions are different; marriage is 
more often a form and a celebration; the percentage of il- 
legitimacy is high, and neither man nor woman is discred- 
ited. It is analogous to what prevails among the negro in 
our southern states or in many of the highly civilized and 
moral West Indian islands — extra-matrimonial maternity is 
no crime, and man, not woman, is accountable for unsanc- 
tified indulgences. Male chastity is practically unknown.^ 

The official statistics of the South American gov- 
ernments and the facts which the most superficial 
knowledge of conditions brings to light confirm Mr. 
Hale's judgment. 

According to the census of Brazil in 1890, 2,603,- 
489 or between one-fifth and one-sixth of the popula- 
tion are returned as illegitimate. In Ecuador Mr. W. 
E. Curtis says that more than one-half of the popula- 
tion are of illegitimate birth. 'At one time in Para- 
guay, after the long wars, it was estimated that the 

iHale, "The South Americans," 3oof. 



SOUTH AMERICAN REPUBLICS OF TO-DAY 77 

percentage of illegitimate births was over 90 per cent. 
In Venezuela, according to the official statistics for 
1906, there were that year 47,606 illegitimate births, or 
68.8 per cent. In Chile the general percentage is 33 per 
cent and the highest in any department a little over 66 
per cent. In England the percentage is 6 per cent, 
and in France and Belgium, 7 per cent. In Bolivia, 
on four random pages of the Military Register of the 
Republic I counted 158 names; of these names, 97 
are stated to be legitimate and 61, or 38.6 per cent 
illegitimate. There is no shame about the matter in 
this register. The names of father and mother and 
their occupation are given in the case of each illegiti- 
mate born, as well as in the case of the legitimate. In 
Uruguay in 1906, 27^ per cent of the births were 
illegitimate. Some years ago in Barranquilla, Colom- 
bia, Father Revallo, of the parish of San Miguel, pre- 
pared from the church and municipal records a table 
of the vital statistics of Barranquilla for fifteen years 
and published it in one of the secular papers of Bar- 
ranquilla. This table showed that the illegitimate 
births during this period were 71.4 per cent of the 
total births. In Bogota the illegitimate births usually 
outnumber the legitimate. Barranquilla and Bogota 
are fairly representative of the whole of Colombia. 
The statistics would seem to show that the moral con- 
ditions in Brazil are better than in any other South 
American land unless it be the Argentine, for which 
no statistics of illegitimate births are available. But 
Brazil's need is deep and real also, as witness this 
quotation from a recent article written by a priest in 
answer to a layman (Roman Catholic) who wrote an 
article in one of the daily papers of Bahia against 
celibacy, blaming his own Church for all the immo- 



yS SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

rality of the country, holding that if the Church 
would do away with the prohibition of marriage to 
the priests, the country would be healed of all its im- 
morality. The priest in his answer shows just what 
the moral condition of the country is. He says to this 
layman : 

Will you do me the kindness to answer me, without pas- 
sion and without preconceived notions, why the religious 
marriage of a deluge of laymen has not had the effect of 
moralizing them — men who, notwithstanding their being mar- 
ried, give the most sorrowful spectacle of the most developed 
libertinism. Is it possible that you, who are so able to give 
the exact number of priests who are living in concubinage, 
from the great knowledge you have of our State, have never 
heard it said that there is an uncountable number of laymen, 
married men, yes, twice married, married by the civil au- 
thority and by the Church, who yet, notwithstanding all this 
marriage, spend, without exaggeration, large fortunes with 
women, who by no title or right whatever belong to them, 
thus giving great scandals to society and do the most shame- 
ful injustice to their own wives and children? 

But most authoritative of all is the deliverance of 
the Plenary Council of the Latin American Bishops 
held in Rome in 1899, describing the moral conditions 
in Latin America. In the Acts and Decrees of the 
Council, it is declared: 

The widespread pollution of fornication is to be deplored 
and condemned, but especially the most foul pest of con- 
cubinage, which, increasing both in public and in private, 
in great cities as well as in country villages, is leading not a 
few men of every station to eternal destruction. Most un- 
fortunate will be the religious training and the moral esti- 
mation of the children begotten of an unhappy union of this 
sort. So dreadful a plague brings in fear and terror alike, 
destructive of all religion, of all honor and of true civiliza- 
tion. On that account, moreover, the condition of those 
living in concubinage is pitiable, because, having wallowed 



SOUTH AMERICAN REPUBLICS OF TO-DAY 79 

in the filth of unchastity, they are truly converted only with 
great difficulty, because, being made a most dangerous rock 
of stumbling and a cause of many offences, it is with great 
difficulty that they are willing to satisfy God and men and 
the Church. Therefore let the guardians of souls, with 
bowels of mercy, seek out wandering sheep of this kind and 
lead them back to Christ's fold; and, terrified by no difficul- 
ties and placing their hope in God, let them despair of the 
safety of no sinner, but with the most ardent zeal let them 
be solicitous for the conversion of all sinners. Hence, avail- 
ing themselves of the advice of their own Bishop, let them 
strive to prepare a plain way of conversion, and as often as 
scandals can be removed from the midst by legitimate mar- 
riage, let them gladly remit temporal prerogatives and rights 
that they may win souls for God and legitimize offspring, 
according to the rules handed down by approved authors. 

And with no less zeal let parish priests and confessors be 
solicitous for the conversion of adulterers, since their tem- 
poral and eternal lot ought to be regarded as utterly miser- 
able. Of these adulterers the Council of Trent has said : " It 
is a grave sin that dissolute men should have concubines, 
but it is a most grave sin, and one committed with remark- 
able contempt for this great sacrament (matrimony) that 
married men also should live in this state of damnation and 
should dare sometimes even to support and keep them at 
home with their wives.*' ^ 

Throughout South America it is safe to say that 
from one-fourth to one-half of the population is ille- 
gitimate, born of parents married neither by Church 
nor by State. We must allow for cases of unmar- 
ried people who are faithful to each other but in such 
cases the responsibility is upon the Church whose 
charge for marriage has seemed prohibitory to such 
couples and whose constant influence is opposed to 
civil marriage. The idea that a man should be morally 
pure is too little proclaimed and too much ridiculed in 
South America. The students say quite candidly, and 

^Titulus XI, Caput I, 329-336, §§ 756, 757- 



80 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

those who teach them sadly admit it, that for a boy 
to remain chaste after the age of sixteen or eighteen 
is a rare exception. Workers among students in cities 
Hke Rio and Buenos Aires, who know their Uves in- 
timately, say that they could number on the fingers of 
their hands all the absolutely pure young men they 
know in these great student centers. South America 
is a continent deficient in the standard of absolute 
moral purity for men. Any record of diseases such 
as the doctors in the hospitals lay before one, confirms 
this judgment. There is horrid immorality in our 
own land, and its existence is a warrant and a call for 
any effort which anyone is willing to make to heal it. 
Who dare deny the right and duty of any morally 
cleansing power to go in upon this moral need in 
South America? There are hundreds of men in 
South America to-day who declare that they never 
received any standard of purity or any power of 
righteousness until they heard the Gospel from the 
evangelical missionaries. We were deeply impressed 
by the solemn statement of one mature man, that all 
the men who had been boys with him were dead, 
their lives having been eaten out by sin, and that he 
would have gone their way with them and was only 
living and working now because Christ, whom he met 
through the missions and whom he had never known 
in the South American system, had redeemed him, in 
body as well as soul. 

There are good men in South America who realize 
and mourn these deep moral needs. There are other 
men both there and here who think lightly of what 
the Latin American bishops so earnestly deplore. Im- 
morality, such men say, is inevitable and universal, 
and there are worse evils than it is. But we know 



SOUTH AMERICAN REPUBLICS OF TO-DAY 8 1 

that nations that are seamed with moral evil, on what- 
ever continent they may be, are doomed and that true 
and lasting national prosperity and progress can come 
only to the nations which are built on clean men and 
pure homes. 

The deepest need in South America is the moral 
need. The continent wants character. And charac- 
ter has two great springs, education and religion. Are 
these springs clean and abounding in South America? 



CHAPTER III 

THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION 

The South American republics have never lacked 
farseeing men who realized that popular government 
must rest on popular intelligence and that democratic 
institutions cannot be based on general illiteracy or 
on an educated oligarchy. Sarmiento, one of South 
America's greatest statesmen, was one such man. 
" Found schools," he said, " and you will do away 
with revolutions." Another of these patriotic men 
lives in Montevideo and has spent his life in getting 
together a museum of educational material illustra- 
tive of school equipment and pedagogical methods 
with the one ambition of advancing popular educa- 
tion. From the days of Sarmiento there have been 
statesmen who put the improvement and enlargement 
of educational facilities foremost among their policies. 
Balmaceda whom Chile greatly laments and whose 
real services to his country are now recognized, did 
this and built many of the public school buildings in 
Chile. Some of the best men on the continent are 
serving the state in education. Each government has 
its Minister of Education or places a department of 
education under some other minister, as, for example, 
the Minister of Justice. 

But the educational problems with which these re- 
publics have to deal are difficult and perplexing. 

82 



THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION 83 

They have come down to them out of the colonial 
period with certain distinct transmitted characteris- 
tics. Some of these are brought out in the " His- 
torical Sketch of Education in the Argentine Repub- 
Hc," by Prof. Carlos O. Bunge, of the University of 
Buenos Aires.^ The first section of this sketch de- 
scribes " education during the colonial epoch" : 

The conquest and colonization of Spanish America were 
effected at a time when the divine right of kings was an 
unquestioned fundamental dogma of the political creed of 
European nations. The principal object of all the laws re- 
lating to the Spanish colonies and their institutions was to 
maintain the new lands and peoples under the temporal and, 
to a certain extent, under the ecclesiastical dominion of the 
Catholic King. . . . 

There was no methodical plan, but some form of instruc- 
tion was instituted in each locality according to its condition 
and resources. The classical forms of the teaching bodies 
of the middle ages, which required that the instruction 
should be strictly dogmatic in its character, were recognized 
in these decrees. In such distant lands and among such a 
wild and turbulent mixed population as they contained a 
severe discipline in habits of obedience to the Crown and 
Church was indispensable. The Government, therefore, al- 
ways fearful of insubordination, reenforced by its authority 
the educational system based upon dogmatism and obedience 
which the Jesuits had already established in Spain and in 
nearly all the Catholic world. . . . 

The instruction was of a pronounced theological character. 
The principal object of the universities was to graduate a 
Creole clergy who should keep the principle of the divine 
right of kings alive and strong in the colonies. 

In the third section of his sketch, Professor Bunge 
speaks more at length of the University of Cordova, 

* Translated from " El Monitor de la Educacion Comun," October 31, 
1908, and published in the Report of the U. S. Commissioner of Edu- 
cation, for 1909. 



84 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

which was typical of the rest, which was founded in 
the early part of the seventeenth century by the Jes- 
uits and which maintained its aristocratic character 
until its " nationaHzation " (that is, until the national 
government assumed charge of it) in 1854. Up to 
that time purity of blood was a prerequisite to ad- 
mission, and persons of mixed negro and white blood 
in particular were denied entrance. 

The Roman Catholic Church deserves credit for 
whatever education was given in the colonial days 
and its limitations were in the main simply those of 
contemporary ecclesiastical education in Europe, but 
the spirit and principles of this education lingered on 
after the colonial period had ended and the repub- 
lican era had begun, in which the first essential of the 
new form of government was that all the people 
should be educated and that their education should be 
an education in liberty. The old colonial education 
had been all in the interest of a certain political 
theory. It had been designed to make men submis- 
sive to monarchical authority in State and Church. It 
was an education in traditional opinions. There was 
no scientific freedom. There was no free study of 
history. There was no general and popular educa- 
tion. There were no technical or industrial studies. 
The whole system was ecclesiastical and aristocratic. 
The result is that to-day in comparison with the ad- 
vanced nations of the world there is a great neglect 
of popular education and an appalling illiteracy. 

Before we face these facts, however, and other 
educational defects, it will be well to recognize the 
great progress which the South American republics 
have made in education and the extent of their pres- 
ent educational equipment. Argentina, Chile and 



THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION 85 

Brazil lead the South American states in their educa- 
tional development. 

I. Argentina. In 1868 when General Sarmiento 
was in Washington as the Argentine Minister, he was 
elected to the presidency of the republic. Returning 
to Buenos Aires, he took up his work full of the 
ideals of education which had come to him in the 
United States. One of his first acts was to commis- 
sion Dr. William Goodfellow, an American mission- 
ary returning to the United States, to send out some 
educated American women to establish normal schools 
in Argentina. Some capable women were sent and 
were nobly supported in their work. Scholarships 
were founded for deserving pupils and the influence 
of the work then done abides to this day. It gave 
Argentina the place of leadership in Spanish educa- 
tion. In a paper on " Educational Progress in the 
Argentine Republic and Chile " in the Report of the 
United States Commissioner of Education for 1909,^ 
Prof. L. S. Rowe, of the University of Pennsylvania, 
gives a comprehensive and accurate account of pres- 
ent educational conditions : 

The impulse given to public education under the presidency 
of Sarmiento assured the Argentine Republic a position of 
leadership in educational matters among the South American 
Republics. Although much has been accomplished since that 
time, both in the extension of the system and in the improve- 
ment of methods, it cannot be said that the Argentine Re- 
public has maintained that position of undisputed leadership 
in South American educational matters which it once occu- 
pied. The most serious obstacles to progress have been : 

First. The poverty of the Provinces, upon which the re- 
sponsibility for primary education was placed under the con- 
stitution of 1853, and — 

Second. The lack of stability in the educational policy of 

' 323-349. 



86 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

the Federal Government in the development of the system 
of secondary instruction. The technical direction of this 
branch of the educational system has suffered severely from 
the uncertainties of political changes. Continuity of policy 
has been quite impossible. Each incoming minister of public 
instruction has attempted to leave his impress upon the sys- 
tem of secondary instruction by incorporating his personal 
views into the curriculum. 

Dr. Row^e publishes a table showing the total popu- 
lation of the Argentine on December 21, 1905, to 
have been 5,974,771. The primary school population, 
between six and fourteen years of age, was 1,194,945. 
The total actual attendance in primary schools was 
602,565, of whom one-fifth were in private schools. 
About 50 per cent of the primary school population 
was in school. In the United States, according to the 
census of 1900, the number of children between five 
and fourteen years of age was 16,954,257. The num- 
ber of these children in school was 10,717,696 or 67 
per cent. One-tenth of the total population of the 
Argentina was in primary schools. One-seventh of 
the total population of the United States was in 
schools for the same aged children. 

In the Argentine there were 26 " colegios '* or sec- 
ondary schools with a total budget of $1,385,806. Dr. 
Rowe speaks of two notable defects in these schools 
— the instability of the curriculum and the lack of 
carefully trained teachers: 

Instead of training men especially for these positions, the 
unfortunate plan has been adopted, especially in the smaller 
towns, of dividing the " catedras " amongst the resident and 
practicing lawyers and physicians. ... 

Another danger to which every minister of public instruc- 
tion is subjected is the tremendous pressure for appoint- 
ments to teaching positions in these schools. Inasmuch as 
there is no special pedagogical preparation requisite for such 



THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION 87 

appointments, political leaders are besieged with applications, 
and soon find themselves unable to withstand the pres- 
sure. . . . 

The description of secondary education would be incom- 
plete without some reference to the large number of Catholic 
" colegios " under the direction of the religious orders — 
Jesuits, Redemptionists, etc. It is to these schools that the 
sons of the leading families are sent. The State exercises 
some control, but this control is quite inadequate. The im- 
portant position occupied by private schools is evident from 
the fact that in the city of Buenos Aires there are at the 
present time 450 private as compared with 190 public schools. 

The secondary schools for women are known as " liceos." 
Of these there are but two at present in the Argentine Re- 
public, one in Buenos Aires and the other in La Plata. Their 
curriculum is even more overburdened, for to all the studies 
of the " colegios " music and domestic science have been 
added. 

There are 35 normal schools having a four-year 
course, with two additional years for those who wish 
to qualify for teaching in normal schools. There are 
three elementary commercial schools and two indus- 
trial schools and a few special schools. 

Of the three national universities, the oldest is the 
University of Cordova, erected nearly three cen- 
turies ago. In fact, it is the second oldest university 
on the American Continent, having been founded in 
1609. The other two universities, Buenos Aires and 
La Plata, are comparatively recent foundations, the 
latter having been established but four years ago. 

A worker who knows the university students well 
tells us of their moral and religious conditions : 

The National University at Buenos Aires has enrolled over 
four thousand young men of the influential classes of the 
Argentine Republic. At least half of them come from the 
smaller cities and towns and live in the boarding houses 
of the city. The atmosphere in which these students live 



88 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

is not conducive to moral vigor. There is every encourage- 
ment to immorality and gambling, which are the great vices, 
and, unfortunately, the great majority have no conscience on 
these sins. 

As regards religion, I would say that not over ten per cent 
of them are more than nominally identified with Roman 
Catholicism, which is the State religion. Another ten per 
cent take a hostile attitude towards the Roman Church. This 
hostility does not mean, however, that there is any sym- 
pathy with Protestantism, in the best sense of that word. 
They are in sympathy with a Protestantism that protests, 
but they have had no contact with evangelical Christianity. 
Christianity and Romanism, indeed, mean to them one and 
the same thing. The great mass of students are indifferent, 
never having given any thought to religious questions. They 
believe in nothing.^ 

2. Chile. Professor Rowe's paper passes from Ar- 
gentina to Chile: 

Educational progress in Chile presents a striking contrast 
with the Argentine Republic. In the Argentine Republic the 
democratic development of the country since 1850 led to the 
early development of primary education. Secondary and 
university instruction received but little attention. It is true 
that the Argentine educational system remained in a primi- 
tive state until the presidency of Sarmiento. Nevertheless, 
even up to his time more attention was given to primary 
than to secondary schools. The aristocratic social organiza- 
tion of Chile, on the other hand, led to the concentration of 
effort on the development of the secondary schools. As a 
result, Chile possesses the best " liceos " and " institutos " in 
South America. Unfortunately, the system of primary edu- 
cation was neglected for many years and resulted in a de- 
gree of illiteracy amongst the masses which made impassable 
the chasm between social classes.. The country is now suf- 
fering from the results of this long-continued neglect. With 
the industrial progress of the country the economic condi- 
tion of the laboring classes has been steadily improving, but, 

1 C. J. Ewald, " The Students of Buenos Aires," The Student World, 
January, 1909, ^i. 



( 




THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION 89 

owing to their ignorant condition and total lack of prepara- 
tion, the higher wages have in many cases resulted in de- 
generation rather than in progress. The primitive wants of 
the agricultural laborers were satisfied by the lower wage, 
and the surplus has been used, to a very considerable extent, 
in an increased indulgence in spirituous liquors. Saving is 
almost unknown to the Chilean laborer, so that the increased 
wages have not led to a more careful provision for the future 
of the family. 

On the other hand, the increased wages, in bettering the 
situation of the laborer, have also given rise to a spirit of dis- 
content, a desire for a larger share in production. The ig- 
norance of the laborer makes him an easy prey to demagogic 
agitation. 

The Chilean educational system in all its branches is na- 
tional in scope and organization — that is to say, is maintained 
by the national treasury. No local taxes are levied for edu- 
cational purposes, and the local authorities have no voice in 
the administration of or control over the system. . . . 

During the past fifteen years the leading statesmen of 
Chile have realized that this neglect of primary instruction 
is a real menace to the stability and orderly development of 
the country. The social organization of Chile is still funda- 
mentally aristocratic. Until comparatively recent times the 
bulk of the population, especially the agricultural laborers, 
were in a condition of peonage. The industrial advance of 
the country, together with the rising wage scale, has pro- 
duced in the laboring classes a consciousness of power. The 
illiteracy of the great mass of the laboring classes greatly 
increases the dangers of the situation. The extension of 
primary instruction has therefore become one of the condi- 
tions prerequisite to orderly national advance. The country 
must now prepare itself to make every sacrifice for this 
purpose. 

In 1907 there were 2,319 primary schools, with 
3,997 teachers and a registration of 197,174 pupils, 
with an average attendance of 121,176. The primary- 
schools and pupils have doubled since 1891. The popu- 
lation of Chile in 1907 was 3,249,279, so that less than 
one-sixteenth of the total population was in primary 



90 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

schools, as compared with one-tenth in the Argentine 
and one-seventh in the United States. 

There are fifteen normal schools, six for men and 
nine for women. The total matriculation in 1907 
was 1,977, with an average attendance of 1,609. 

There were 39 " liceos " or secondary schools for 
boys, with a total registration of 9,302 and an at- 
tendance of 7,896, and 30 for girls, with a registra- 
tion of 4,810 and an attendance of 3,839. But these 
" liceos " have preparatory or primary departments 
which enrolled about half of the above numbers, leav- 
ing the other half as genuine secondary students. 

Commercial schools have been established, enroll- 
ing 1,453 pupils, and two excellent industrial schools 
have been opened in Santiago, one for boys and one 
for girls. There are 372 private primary schools, and 
in 1906 the Government granted subsidies to 44 pri- 
vate secondary schools. 

University instruction has been more fully developed than 
any other portion of the educational system, ... At the 
present time the University [of Chile] offers courses in law 
and political science, medicine, pharmacy, dentistry, engin- 
eering, architecture, and fine arts. The pedagogical institute 
also forms an integral part of the university organiza- 
tion. . . . 

The description of higher education would be incomplete 
without some reference to the Catholic University situated 
in Santiago, which offers courses in law, civil and mining 
engineering, architecture, fine arts, and agriculture. The law 
school has 185 students; the engineering school, 396; the 
agricultural school, 12; and the school of fine arts, 55. In 
all of these departments the equipment is excellent, and the 
teaching corps has been selected with great care. 

The Catholic University occupies an unique position. Its 
main supporters are the members of the conservative party. 
Inasmuch as the wealthier elements of Chilean society are 
to a very large extent affiliated with this party, the donations 



THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION 9I 

and bequests reach a large total each year. In fact, this is 
one of the few instances in Latin America in which a great 
national institution is supported exclusively by private con- 
tributions. 

3. Brazil. Higher education in Brazil can be 
ranked with the higher education offered in Argen- 
tina and Chile, but there is a woeful lack of popular 
primary education. " The Statesman's Year Book " 
for 1910 summarizes the educational provision which 
is made as follows : 

Education is not compulsory. The Republican Govern- 
ment undertakes to provide for higher or university in- 
struction within the Union, leaving the provision of primary 
and training schools to the State Governments. There is, 
in fact, no university in Brazil, but there are 25 facul- 
ties which confer degrees. In Rio de Janeiro are also 
the military college, the preparatory school of tactics, and 
the naval school. At the Capital are maintained by the Fed- 
eral Government a school for the blind and another for the 
deaf and dumb. The Federal Government maintains also a 
School of Arts and a National Institute of Music in the Capi- 
tal, there being similar academies of music in the States of 
Maranhao, Para, Sao Paulo, and several in the State of Rio 
de Janeiro. In Manaos, Bahia, and Curitiba there are schools 
of Fine Arts. There are, besides, 28 industrial schools, 11 
agricultural and 9 commercial institutions for tuition. There 
are faculties of law at Recife, Sao Paulo, Ceara, Goyaz, 
Para, Bahia, Bello Horizonte, Porto Alegre and Rio de 
Janeiro (2) ; faculties of medicine at Rio de Janeiro, Bahia, 
and Porto Alegre; colleges of pharmacy at Ouro Preto, 
Belem, Juiz de Fora, and Sao Paulo; schools of odontology 
at Rio de Janeiro, Bello Horizonte and also attached to the 
colleges of medicine and pharmacy; engineering colleges at 
Rio, Ouro Preto, Bahia, Recife, Porto Alegre, and Sao 
Paulo. 

There existed in 1907, in the various States, 7,089 public 
schools, of which 1,363 were in Minas Geraes, 1,144 in Rio 
Grande do Sul, and 1,122 in Sao Paulo. Besides these the 
municipalities maintained 1,815 schools, and private institu- 



92 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

tions numbered 2,243. I" the Federal capital there are 2 
preparatory schools controlled by the Federal Governor, and 
40 private. In the States there are 24 public and 258 private 
establishments of a similar character. For teachers' diplomas 
there are 29 colleges in all Brazil, supported by the Union, 
and 15 private. In recent years public instruction has made 
great progress. 

Among the oldest and best known schools are the 
Military School, the Polytechnic School, and the 
School of Fine Arts in Rio. There is great disparity 
of educational development in the different states. 
Half of the schools of the republic are in the three 
states of Minas Geraes, Rio Grande do Sul, and Sao 
Paulo. The state of Sao Paulo has gained greatly 
from American influence. American teachers were 
imported to start kindergarten and normal schools 
and Dr. Lane, president of Mackenzie College, the 
American missionary college in Sao Paulo, has been 
a constant friend and helpful adviser of Brazilian 
education. 

The strongest section of the educational system in 
Brazil is the gymnasium. There are twenty such 
state institutions and some of them contain efficient 
and well-equipped teachers and according to Latin 
American standards do good work. There are forty 
or more private institutions which until lately were 
recognized as gymnasia and their students admitted 
to the professional schools without examination, but 
the latest educational law has abolished such privi- 
leges for all institutions, including the government 
gymnasia. 

There are notable defects to be overcome in Brazil's 
educational scheme. The country is immense and 
without any common and central educational organ- 
ization. 



THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION 93 

In Brazil education is backward, due, in large measure, to 
the fact that it is one of the interests that is in the control 
of the states rather than in the hands of the Federal author- 
ities. In the great centers like the capital, there is real in- 
terest in art and letters, but the doctrine of State Rights, as 
held in those outlying districts where the people themselves 
are not educated, imposes from their point of view practical 
obstacles to educational progress. It is a fact that in this, 
the greatest of the South American Republics, there is no 
real university.^ 

Roman Catholic influence is increasing again in 
Brazilian politics and education, but the state educa- 
tional system is still religiously neutral if not posi- 
tively hostile. The result is that the great mass of 
Brazilian students are not only alienated from the 
Roman Catholic Church but antagonistic to all reHg- 
ion. Mr. Warner of Pernambuco set forth this situ- 
ation in his address at the Rochester Student Volun- 
teer Convention: 

Senhor Argj-miro Galvao was at one time lecturer on 
philosophy in the law school in Sao Paulo, in many respects 
the leading law school in Brazil. One of his lectures, " The 
Conception of God," was published as a tract as late as 1906. 
I quote the following from that lecture : " The Catholic faith 
is dead. There is no longer confidence in Christian dogma. 
The supernatural has been banished from the domain of 
science. The conquests of philosophy have done away with 
the old preconception of spirituality. Astronomy, with La 
Place, has invaded the heavenly fields and in all celestial 
space there has not been found a kingdom for your God. 
. . . We are in the realm of realism. The reason meditates 
not on theological principles, but upon facts furnished by 
experience. God is a myth. He has no reality. He is not an 
object of science. . . . Man invented gods and God that the 
world might be ruled. These conceptions resulted from his 
progressive intelligence. The simple spirit refrains from all 

1 Marrion Wilcox, " International Cooperation in South American 
Education," The Student World, January, 1909, sf. 



94 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

criticism and accepts the idea of God without resistance. 
The cultured spirit repels the idea in virtue of its inherent 
contradictions." 

Galvao is only one of many educators in the best schools 
of Brazil who have broken with the Church, and, of all the 
hundreds of students that annually sit under these teachings, 
very few could be found who would question the accuracy 
of this line of thought or seek to justify the Christian faith. 

The great difficulty that confronts the laborer in this field 
is not that of tearing men away from an old faith. The 
great majority have already repudiated their old faith. The 
pity of it is that they think they have repudiated Christianity.^ 

4. Uruguay. ,In Uruguay primary education is ob- 
ligatory. In 1908 there were 1,781 primary schools, 
223 urban, and 1,588 rural. In 1907 there were 7^,727 
pupils enrolled, with an average attendance of 58,215. 
The boys were 41,321 and the girls 37,406, showing a 
larger proportion of girls probably than in any other 
South American country, unless it be Argentina. 

The one university of the country is in Monte- 
video. It has faculties of law, social sciences, medi- 
cine, mathematics, commerce, agriculture and veter- 
inary science. There are also a preparatory school 
and other institutions for secondary education with 
2,591 pupils. The university in 1905 had 112 pro- 
fessors, 530 regular students and 661 pupils receiv- 
ing secondary education. There are normal schools, 
a School of Arts and Trades, a Military College and a 
number of Roman Catholic religious seminaries. 

There cannot be any sharp classification of South 
American Republics, but with Uruguay as borderland 
between, we pass from the three more progressive 
nations to the states which are indisputably backward 
in education. 

^ " Students and the Present Missionary Crisis," 327f. 



THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION 95 

5. Peru. The educational situation in Peru is set 
forth in a paper entitled " Public Instruction in Peru," 
by Dr. Giesecke, Rector of the University of Cuzco, 
in The Annals of the American Academy of Political 
Science, the volume entitled *' Progress in Latin 
America." ^ There is an interesting account also in 
Garland's " Peru in 1906." ^ Dr. Giesecke recog- 
nizes that " the greatest problem confronting Peru to- 
day is the organization and extension of public in- 
struction." He points out three " obstacles which 
impede rapid progress to the best interests of edu- 
cation." One is the physiography of the country 
— a narrow coast region, with no rainfall, occupy- 
ing ten per cent of the area, a high mountainous 
region with poor means of communication occu- 
pying twenty-five per cent of the country, and to the 
east an immense tropical area embracing two-thirds 
of the republic, little known, thinly settled and in part 
by uncivilized races. A second obstacle is the social 
organization of the country, the great mixture of 
races. The third obstacle is politics. 

^The constitution of Peru guarantees free primary 
instruction and makes it obligatory. The following 
table will furnish the details: 

Do not 
Receive receive Could Could 

instruc- instruc- Could not Could not 

tion tion read read write write 

Boys 65,536 164,794 73,77^ 156,609 50,615 179,726 

Girls 34,478 151,736 41,273 144,884 28,285 157,918 

Total 100,814 316,530 115,051 301,493 78,900 337,644 

A census of school children within the age limits for the 
purpose of primary education was made in 1902. 

According to racial distribution there were 67,928 white 
^ 85-104. "^ 126-150. 



96 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

children, 198,674 indigenous or native children, 144,298 mes- 
tizos and 5,644 blacks. . . . 

LThe. teachers in the primary schools are women in the 
majority of cases. Although supposed to have a diploma, 
the majority of teachers are not so provided. Thus, out of 
2,944 teachers, 1,225 men, 1,719 women, two-thirds did not 
possess a diploma.^ 

There are three normal schools, one for men and 
two for women, with a total attendance in 1907 of 
170. A total of $100,000 was expended on these 
in 1906 for salaries, equipment, etc., and 25 students 
were graduated. In 1908 the total revenues available 
for primary education were $1,309,000. In 1910 they 
were less than $1,000,000. 

'In secondary education the law provides for two 
types of schools, colegios and liceos. There ought, 
according to law, to be loi liceos. There is not one. 
There were 28 colegios in 1908 with 3,289 pupils. 
Three were for girls, with a total of 200 pupils. In 
1908 there were 34 private colegios with 1,291 pupils 
under the care of the Roman Catholic Church or pri- 
vate parties. There is an abundance of educational 
decrees but the education itself is of a most imper- 
fect character, with a wonderful system of examining 
boards which are paid fees for every student sup- 
posed to be examined regardless of whether he ap- 
pears for examination. In 1908 the total Government 
expenditure on the secondary schools was $310,000, 
most of which went to salaries. 

The income of the four universities in Lima, Cuzco, 
Arequipa and Trujillo amounted in 1908 to about a 
third of a million dollars. There is also an Engi- 
neering School, an Agricultural College and a School 

* Annals of the American Academy of Political Science, " Progress 
in Latin America." 



THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION 97 

of Industrial Arts, all located in Lima. The Univer- 
sity of San Marcos in Lima was founded fifty-six 
years before the settlement of Jamestown, Va., and 
is one of the oldest institutions on the Western Hem- 
isphere. The University became famous all over 
South America. There were at one time 1,200 stu- 
dents. The education it gave was scholastic and lit- 
erary, rather than practical. Dr. Villaran, professor in 
the faculty of jurisprudence, in an address at the open- 
ing of the University in 1900, pointed out the great 
weakness of education in Peru at the present day: 

We still maintain the same ornamental and literary edu- 
cation which the Spanish governors implanted in South 
America for political purposes, instead of an intellectual 
training capable of advancing material well-being, which 
gives brilliancy to cultivated minds, but does not produce prac- 
tical intelligence; which can amuse the leisure of the rich, 
but does not teach the poor how to work. We are a people 
possessed by the same mania for speaking and writing as 
old and decadent nations. We look with horror upon active 
professions which demand energy and the spirit of strife. 
Few of us are willing to endure the hardships of mining or 
incur the risks and cares of manufacture and trade. Instead 
we like tranquillity and security, the semi-repose of public 
office, and the literary professions to which the public opin- 
ion of our society urges us. Fathers of families like to see 
their sons advocates, doctors, officeholders, literati, and pro- 
fessors. Peru is much like China — the promised land of 
functionaries and literati.^ 

" With the native tastes thus turning to the unpro- 
ductive professions," the United States Commissioner 
of Education remarks: 

It is not surprising to learn that most of the business of 
Peru is carried on by foreigners, the railroads, the mines, 

^ Report of United States Commissioner of Education, 1908, Chapter 
V, " The Modern Aspect of Higher Education in Spanish American 
Countries," 153, 



98 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

the manufactures, and commerce being largely in their hands, 
the reason of this being, as Doctor Villaran repeats, that 
the old aristocratic idea that labor is dishonorable still pre- 
vailed very largely among the Peruvian upper classes. No 
descendant of a noble could engage in any lucrative occu- 
pation; it would disgrace him. Labor is for plebeians, and 
active commerce is hardly less disgraceful than a manual 
trade. To this feeling the difference of race also contrib- 
uted; all the whites wished to be, or be like, counts and 
marquises, and the best way of proving their nobility was 
by not working. The Spaniards who came to America be- 
came the owners of ranches or mines, but did not work them- 
selves. There were negro slaves and Indians to do the ac- 
tual work.i 

The whole educational system of Peru is merely an 
appeal for a proper system with good sense and per- 
manency in it. Some capable educational advisers 
have been imported but they have been largely para- 
lyzed by the political machinations which have made 
education a mere travesty, as in most South American 
lands. Snr. Garland says quite frankly : " The army 
of Peru is the principal educational element of the 
people." ^ He has in mind the pitiful inadequacy of 
primary education and the instruction given in mili- 
tary service to the large number of ignorant conscript 
soldiers. 

6. Colombia. The bulletin of the Bureau of Amer- 
can Republics on Colombia, issued in 1909, says with 
great trustfulness and optimism: 

A great improvement is to be noted in the extent and effi- 
ciency of public instruction throughout the Republic, not 
only in the centres of population, but also in the rural dis- 
tricts, where numerous public schools have been estabHshed. 
Evening manual training schools are conducted in various 

^ Report of United States Commissioner of Education, 1908, Chap- 
ter V, 154. 

2 " Peru in 1906," 164. 



THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION 99 

parts of the country, and this system of public instruction 
is receiving the earnest support of the Government. 

There is an immense amount of education pro- 
vided by executive decree in Colombia which 
is never provided in any more tangible way. The 
actual educational conditions, while probably better 
than in some other South American lands, are pitiful. 

By the Concordat pubHc education is under the 
domination of the Church. Articles 12, 13 and 14 of 
the Concordat declare : 

In universities, colleges, schools and other centres of in- 
struction public education and instruction shall be organized 
and directed in conformity with the dogmas and morals of 
the Catholic religion. Religious instruction is obligatory in 
these centres, and the pious practices of the Catholic religion 
shall be observed in them. Consequently in such centres of 
education, the respective diocesan authorities, either them- 
selves or by means of special delegates, shall exercise the 
right of inspection and revision of text-books, in all that re- 
fers to religion and morals. The Archbishop of Bogota shall 
designate the books that are to serve as texts of religion and 
morals in the universities; and with the object of securing 
uniformity of instruction in the said matters, this Prelate in 
accord with the other diocesan authorities, shall elect the 
text-books for the other establishments of official instruction. 
The Government shall impede the propagation of ideas con- 
trary to Catholic dogma and to the respect and veneration 
due to the Church in the instruction given in literary and 
scientific, as well as in all other branches of education. In 
case that the instruction in religion and morals, in spite of 
the orders and preventions of the Government, shall not be 
conformed to Catholic doctrines, the diocesan authorities can 
deprive the professors and teachers of their right to give in- 
struction in these matters. 

All this means that there is no adequate education 
of any grade, and that what there is is inferior. Now 
and then as one rides through the villages or towns 



100 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

he hears the united murmur of a school at work 
on memorizing, but there is no real attempt to 
provide primary education for the people and most of 
the secondary education is a farce. There is not one 
school of thorough work and of the first order in all 
Colombia. There are no normal schools for the train- 
ing of teachers. The report of the German rector 
of the Escuela Nacional de Comercio in Bogota pre- 
sented in 1909 to the Minister of Public Instruc- 
tion, presents the view of an intelligent and capable 
man who came to Bogota from educational work in 
Ecuador and Chile : " Primary and secondary insti- 
tutions here," he says, " appear to me distinctly in- 
ferior to those of the other countries which I have 
known." We visited the best school in Bogota which 
was not dominated by the Church, the Universidad 
Republicana. It had 240 students, 75 of whom were 
boarders, who paid $16 a month, while day pupils paid 
$10 a year. It was the most dirty, forlorn, run-down- 
at-the-heels, unorganized school I have ever seen. 
!And yet this is higher education in Colombia. Neither 
religion nor ethics can be taught by such education. 
It is not honest education. How can it be religious? 
It is not an education in cleanness. How can it be 
ethical? There is need and there is opportunity for 
clean, thorough, high principled educational work, to 
set a standard for both the Government and the Ro- 
man Catholic Church. There are no reliable school 
statistics. There are said to be 2,987 public schools 
with 200,965 pupils. 

Nearly all the schools for secondary education, 
maintained or assisted by the nation, 

are entrusted to religious corporations of the Catholic Church. 
There used to be in the capital faculties of letters and phil- 



THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION lOI 

osophy; of jurisprudence and political sciences; of medicine 
and natural sciences ; and of mathematics and engineering. 
Of these only the faculty of medicine and natural sciences 
is now open. For the working class there is a school of 
arts and trades directed by the Salesian Fathers. There are 
three schools or colleges open, under religious orders, and 
the School of Fine Arts has just been reopened.^ 

The secondary schools under some of the Roman 
Catholic orders are efficient schools of their kind 
and represent the best educational advantages obtain- 
able in Colombia. 

7. Ecuador. Prior to the liberal revolt of Ecuador 
from the Church of Rome in 1895, education was un- 
der the control of the Roman Catholic Church. The 
school laws allowed none but Catholics to teach in 
any kind of school or even give private lessons. After 
the liberal upheaval a Methodist Presiding Elder was 
commissioned to organize a new system of normal 
schools. All that the change of conditions promised 
has not been fulfilled, but there has been marked im- 
provement in the public school system. Primary edu- 
cation is free and theoretically obligatory. In Quito 
there is a university with 36 professors and 216 stu- 
dents, and there are university bodies in Cuenca and 
Guayaquil. There are in the country 9 schools for 
higher education, 35 secondary and 1,088 primary 
schools. The total number of teachers is 1,498 and 
of pupils 68,380. There are commercial and techni- 
cal schools in Quito and Guayaquil and several nor- 
mal schools. According to the bulletin of the Inter- 
national Bureau of American Republics on Ecuador 
for 1909, the educational equipment of Quito is " five 
colleges (one of them a military college), two normal 

*" Statesman's Year Book," 1910. 



102 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

institutes (one of which is for girls), a university, 
a medical school, two seminaries, a theological school, 
an institute of science, a school of arts and trades, 
three schools for young women and three kinder- 
gartens." ^ 

8. Venezuela, Public instruction was reorganized 
by an executive decree of July 4, 1903, according to 
the provisions of which decree public instruction con- 
sists of the following eight branches : 

Primary schools, secondary schools, normal schools, 
national colleges, engineering school, universities, 
academies, polytechnic school. 

In the Federal district 100 public schools* are estab- 
lished, and in the States of the Union 600. Instruc- 
tion is imparted in said institutions according to the 
provisions of the aforesaid code of public instruction. 

Primary instruction is divided into compulsory and 
voluntary education, both imparted free. Compul- 
sory primary education is imposed by law on all Ven- 
ezuelans of either sex.^ 

This is the situation on paper. According to the 
"Statesman's Year Book," 191 1, there are now 1,217 
elementary schools with 26,988 pupils. 

The volume on Venezuela in 1904, issued by the 
International Bureau of the American Republics, re- 
ported 36 national colleges with 131 professors and 
1,457 students. The Bureau's bulletin on Venezuela 
in 1909 states that the total number of federal, mu- 
nicipal and private schools in the country is 1,525, of 
secondary institutions 88, and of higher institutions 2, 
the University of Caracas and the University of Las 
Andes. On June 30, 1908, a total enrollment of 
35,777 pupils was reported in a population of 2,664,- 

*" Ecuador, 1909," 15. *" Venezuela, 1904," 503. 



THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION IO3 

241 and the total amount collected for school pur- 
poses in 1908 was $776,000. 

9. Bolivia. Public instruction in Bolivia is divided 
into primary, secondary and superior. Primary edu- 
cation is gratuitous and as in Peru is theoretically 
compulsory. By law primary education is under the 
care of the municipal councils. In 1901 there were, 
according to official data, 733 primary schools in the 
whole country, with 41,587 pupils and 938 teachers, 
the appropriation for the support of the schools being 
140,000 bolivianos, or about $56,000. 

In secondary education there were in 1901 13 col- 
leges with 115 professors and 2,553 pupils, with an 
appropriation of 100,000 bolivianos or $40,000. In 
1900 the statistics gave eight official colleges, four 
seminaries, one religious school and four private 
lyceums. None of these gave the equivalent of the 
education given in a first-class American high school, 
yet they offered the degree of B.A. and prepared their 
students for the professional courses of the univer- 
sities. 

Superior instruction was given in professional 
courses in law, medicine and theology. There are in- 
stitutions known as universities at La Paz, Chuqui- 
saca, Cochabamba, Potosi, Tarija, Santa Cruz and 
Oruco. All these give law courses ; the first three 
give medicine also and theology is given at these three 
and at Tarija. There were, in 1901, 677 pupils in 
superior institutions. 

There are also two commercial schools at Sucre 
and Trinidad, one military school at La Paz, one 
agricultural school at Umala, an engineering and min- 
ing school at Oruco and a school of painting at 
Cochabamba. 



104 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

10. Paraguay. At the bottom of the Hst educa- 
tionally comes Paraguay. There, too, education is 
compulsory on paper. In 1901 there were two nor- 
mal schools, 15 high schools, 245 primary schools, 
107 private schools and one agricultural school, with 
a total attendance of 25,247 out of a population of 
631,347. The total amount appropriated for the De- 
partment of Public Works and Public Instruction 
in 1910 was $453,984. There were five so-called col- 
leges and a national university established in 1890 at 
Asuncion, declared by its founder to be " a first-class 
establishment, ranking as high as any other of its 
kind." It offers a six years' course in law, social 
sciences and medicine, with courses in pharmacy and 
botanical training. 

This survey has already indicated the strength and 
weakness of education in South America. 

I. There is much good work done, but in general 
the school systems are showy, top-heavy, theoretical. 
As the statistics already quoted indicate, a great army 
of professors is employed over a comparatively small 
body of students. A great deal of money is spent on 
appearance but solid work is rare. All this is part of 
the situation to be met. As Mr. Wilcox says: 

It is absolutely necessary to realize certain characteristics 
of the Latin American mind in order to understand present 
conditions in education in South America. In these matters, 
our friends in the Southern Republics are not self-reliant 
but dependent, and their attainments are apt to be showy 
rather than substantial. They themselves characterize their 
enthusiasms as " fire in straw," blazing up quickly but not 
usually supplying force for sustained effort. As for strength 
of intellectual fiber, that is always and everywhere a ques- 
tion of character. In Chile, for example, native boys and 
young Englishmen work side by side in the same business 
houses. The former quite outstrip the latter, showing more 



THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION I05 

ability while they are still quite young, but falling behind in 
the long race simply because they have not learned lessons of 
self-reliance and self-control. When a solid foundation 
of good habits shall take the place of irregularity, self- 
indulgence, and the vices that are too often acquired in the 
South American home and in school, the latent talent of 
these peoples will command world-wide attention.^ 

At the same time it is to be remembered that, as 
Mr. Warner says of the Brazilian students: 

We are not dealing, as some believe, with men of inferior 
intellect. In linguistic ability especially, it is probable that 
no students excel the Latins. It is no uncommon thing to 
meet an educated Brazilian audience which is capable of ap- 
preciating fully a literary program comprising, besides num- 
bers in Portuguese, selections from Italian, Spanish, French, 
English, and German literature. In such an audience many 
are able to speak as well as understand several of these lan- 
guages. With so many avenues of intercourse and such 
mental agility, it is not surprising that the Brazilian student 
is extremely sensitive to any influence that may be brought 
to bear upon him.2 

What is true of the Brazilian is true of others. The 
South American young men are quick, alert, respon- 
sive. They are deserving of all our friendship and 
assistance. But they need moral bottom, character, 
stability — just the qualities which only robust, ethi- 
cal, open-minded and fearless religious principle can 
give them. 

2. In addition to the weaknesses pointed out in the 
detailed survey just made, there are three grave gen- 
eral deficiencies which Professor Rowe sets forth in 
his paper already quoted on " Educational Progress 
in the Argentine Republic and Chile." 

1 Marrion Wilcox, " International Cooperation in South American 
Education," The Student World, January, 1909. 

2 J. H. Warner, " Religion Among Brazilian Students," The Student 
World, January, 1909, lof. 



I06 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

The most serious defect of educational organization in the 
Argentine Republic, Brazil, Chile, and Peru is this tendency 
to impose the same course of study on every boy and girl, 
quite irrespective of their tastes or subsequent vocations. 
From the primary school to the close of the high-school 
course not the slightest freedom of choice is permitted. . . . 

The course of study is open to much criticism, largely be- 
cause of its rigidity and complexity, but its most serious 
defect is that it encourages a great number of young men, 
best fitted for commercial or industrial life, to enter callings 
for which they have no real capacity. . . . The ambition of 
almost every family in these countries is to have their sons 
enter the legal or the medical profession, which has resulted 
in a degree of overcrowding unknown in any other portion 
of the civilized world. . . . 

Industrial enterprises requiring constant application and as- 
siduous attention are in the hands of foreigners. . . . 

Another lesson of American experience of much im- 
portance to the Latin American countries is the necessity of 
training a corps of professional teachers for the " liceos," or 
high schools. Chile is the only country that has made an 
important move in this direction. In the Argentine Republic 
the teaching corps of the high schools, or " colegios," as 
they are called, is made up of practicing lawyers and physi- 
cians. The result is that there is an almost total absence of 
that personal contact between pupil and teacher which is the 
distinguishing characteristic of our educational system. . . . 

A third lesson of American experience of incalculable value 
to the Latin American Republics is the necessity of giving 
greater attention to the education of women. ... In many 
respects the influence of women is greater than in the United 
States, owing to the fact that in the Latin American coun- 
tries the training of children is left almost exclusively to the 
mother. That fellowship and companionship between father 
and sons so characteristic of family life in the United States 
is almost totally lacking. The mother's directing influence 
is almost if not quite exclusive. It is only when the sons 
have reached an age at which it becomes necessary to choose 
a profession or calling that the father's authority becomes 
prominent. . . . 

The tendency to keep the young woman as far removed as 



THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION I07 

possible from contact with real life, the atmosphere of arti- 
ficiality with which she is surrounded, together with the in- 
adequate and in many respects superficial education which 
she receives, react unfavorably on the character and stability 
of Latin American society. The young woman enters upon 
the duties of wifehood and motherhood with either a false 
or totally inadequate idea of social and economic conditions. 
An exaggerated spirit of indulgence toward children, an ac- 
ceptance almost without question of the idea that the sons 
must sow their wild oats, and the consequent lack of disci- 
pline which this involves, tend to develop a generation but 
poorly equipped with the qualities of self-control, determina- 
tion, and continuous application so necessary to the develop- 
ment of a vigorous race. 

Furthermore, the idea of preparing young women of the 
middle class to earn their livelihood is but beginning to find 
acceptance in the countries of Latin America.^ 

3. The problem of providing higher education 
which shall be thorough and which will produce men 
of character is underlain by the problem of true popu- 
lar primary education. Many of the republics pro- 
vide by law for compulsory education, but the provi- 
sion is a farce. Bolivia does so. Out of a total 
school population between five and fourteen years 
of approximately 400,cxx), there were 41,587 in school. 
Peru does so. Out of a total primary school popu- 
lation between five and fourteen years of approxi- 
mately 700,000, there were 100,814 in school. In the 
United States, as we have seen, out of a school popu- 
lation between five and fourteen years of 16,954,357, 
there were 10,761,721 in school. 

The issue for June 23, 1909, of O Estado de Sao 
Paulo, the leading newspaper in Sao Paulo, con- 
tained a letter from a correspondent bemoaning the 
delinquency of Brazil in the education of her people. 

* Report of Commissioner of Education for 1909, 325, 326, 327. 



I08 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

In Brazil, he said, only 28 out of each 1,000 of the 
population were in school; in Paraguay, 47; in Chile, 
53 ; in Uruguay, 79 ; in Argentina, 96. In the Argen- 
tine, out of a population of 6,200,000, 597,203 or 
9.632 per cent were in school. In Brazil, out of 19,- 
910,646 (his figures) only 565,942 or 2.842 per cent. 
In the United States, 19 per cent of the entire popu- 
lation are in school; in Germany, over 16 per cent; 
in Japan over 12 per cent. In other words, about 
four times as large a proportion of the American 
population are in school as of the entire population 
of South America. 

The result in popular illiteracy is just what would 
inevitably result from such neglect. The facts can 
be made real to us by home comparison better than in 
any other way. The average illiteracy in the Ameri- 
can nation is ten per cent and a fraction over. If we 
include all the children under ten years of age who 
are out of school, we have a total illiteracy in 
the United States of about sixteen per cent. Accord- 
ing to the last official census, the proportion of illit- 
eracy in the Republic of Brazil was eighty-five per 
cent, including children under six years of age. A 
Brazilian writer in O Estado de Sao Paulo,^ bitterly 
speaks of his country as Analphabetolandia and de- 
clares : " There can be no doubt about it but that in 
a short time Analphabetolandia will be the first na- 
tion — of Africa." In the Argentine Republic the illit- 
eracy is fifty per cent among those over six years of 
age; in Chile, according to the official census, it is 
sixty per cent ; in Bolivia, according to the " States- 
man's Year Book," it is eighty per cent among those 
over ten years of age. The most illiterate state in 

1 Issue of February 13, 191 0. 



THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION IO9 

the United States is the state of Louisiana, which is 
so ilHterate because of the great mass of ignorant 
negro citizens. The average illiteracy of the state of 
Louisiana is thirty-eight per cent. In other words, 
Louisiana, charging against it all the ignorance of its 
great black population, has less illiteracy than any 
country in South America. And even the most igno- 
rant part of Louisiana — the negroes — averages only 
sixty-one per cent of illiteracy, which makes the dark- 
est section of the United States — these negroes of 
Louisiana — as literate as many of the South American 
republics, in spite of the high intelligence of their lead- 
ing classes, who cannot bear the weight of the great 
popular ignorance. We can put it more concretely in 
one simple parallel. In the year 1901, out of every 
one hundred conscripts in the Chilean army seventy 
were illiterate. In 1904, out of every twenty-five hun- 
dred recruits for the German army, one was illiterate. 
It will bring it to us a little more directly to put the 
illustrations in yet another concrete form. The Ar- 
gentine is one of the most intelligent and advanced 
countries in South America. Compare it for a mo- 
ment with the state of New York, which is just about 
equivalent to it in population. In the Argentine there 
are 15,000 school teachers; in the state of New York 
there are 40,000. In the Argentine there are 550,000 
pupils in the schools ; in the state of New York there 
are 1,400,000. With the same population there are 
three times as many teachers and three times as many 
students in the schools in the state of New York as 
there are in the whole of the Argentine, and the aver- 
age illiteracy of the state of New York is five per 
cent and the average illiteracy of the Argentine Re- 
pubHc is fifty per cent. Or compare, once again, the 



no SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

republic of Bolivia with the state of Minnesota. 
The population is about the same. The conglom- 
erate conditions of the populations are not unlike. 
There is just about as large an immigrant population 
in Minnesota as there is an Indian population in 
Bolivia. Compare the educational situation of the 
two states: eighty per cent of illiteracy in Bolivia, 
four per cent of illiteracy in the state of Minnesota; 
1,300 teachers in Bolivia, 14,000 teachers in Minne- 
sota; 50,000 pupils in Bolivia, 438,000 in the state of 
Minnesota. Or compare the republic of Venezuela 
with the state of Iowa, two sections of about the 
same population: 1,700 teachers in Venezuela, 30,000 
teachers in Iowa; 36,000 pupils in the whole republic 
of Venezuela, and 562,000 in the one state of Iowa. 
Kansas has a population of 1,500,000 in round num- 
bers. The six republics of Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, 
Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay combined have a 
population of 12,000,000 or eight times that of Kan- 
sas. Yet Kansas has 11,258 school teachers or about 
2,000 more than all these six republics and has just 
about the same number of children in school. Kansas 
has one-fourth of her population in school. These 
republics have one-thirtieth of theirs. If it is said 
that we have been picking out the darkest sections 
of South America and contrasting them with the 
brightest sections of the United States, one could 
reply that Argentina is one of the brightest parts of 
South America; but let us take, on the same 
level, New Mexico and Paraguay. New Mexico has 
only two-thirds of the population of Paraguay. It 
has ten per cent more pupils in its schools and twenty 
per cent more public school teachers. 

Consider further the money spent on educational 



THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION III 

systems here and there. The tuition fees for Cohimbia 
University for one year have amounted to more than 
the whole sum which the Chilean government was 
spending in its budget on the education of three and a 
quarter million people. The income of Cornell Uni- 
versity for four months expended on the work of the 
university has been larger than the expenditure of the 
Peruvian government on the education of three and a 
half million people for a whole year. Yale University 
represents annually twice the educational outlay of 
Venezuela. The school revenues of the state of 
Minnesota alone for the fiscal year 1910-11 were 
$14,318,528, far more than all the west coast repub- 
lics combined spent on education and twice the 
amount expended by Argentina. The education bud- 
get of New York City for 1912, amounting to $30,- 
379,(X)0,^ exceeds the combined education budgets of 
all the South American republics. Not one South 
American republic with all its wealth and ample time 
for development has an educational system as effi- 
cient as that which the United States has built up in 
the Philippines in ten years. 

Or pass by the tedium of detailed illustration and 
consider the total educational effort of the whole con- 
tinent. All South America together has just about 
the population of Japan. In South America there 
are 43,000 school teachers; in Japan there are 133,- 
000. In all South America there are two million pu- 
pils in the schools; in Japan there are six millions. 
In other words, comparing Japan with the whole of 
South America, there are three times as many 
teachers and three times as many pupils in its schools 
as in all the republics of South America combined. 

1 The Evening Sun, New York, October 25, 1911. 



112 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

We have scores of mission schools in the one Em- 
pire of Japan. If our missionary educational institu- 
tions are justified, as they are abundantly, in Japan, 
they are three-fold more justified, on the face of 
these facts themselves, in the great continent of Latin 
America. If we owe our help to Japan, we owe it 
also to our neighboring continent, bound to us by in- 
numerable friendly bonds, and seeking our brotherly 
help in dealing with a great need. It has some good 
institutions and higher educational systems, but it 
welcomes and desires all friendly aid in shaping char- 
acter and in meeting the deep intellectual require- 
ments of its great masses. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE ROMAN CHURCH AND THE PROBLEM 
OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY 

I. The founding and development of the Roman 
Church in South America. 

The religious motive played as large a part in the 
discovery and settlement of the New World as the 
motive of political expansion or of commercial greed. 
Ferdinand and Isabella were animated by a deeper 
and more sincere desire to extend Christ's kingdom 
than to enlarge their own. They included this end in 
their plans and required of the leaders whom they 
sent out that they should not use violence in the con- 
version of the heathen but should win them by per- 
suasion alone. After each of his voyages Columbus 
was asked by the Queen to describe what had been 
done for the conversion of the Indians. The Portu- 
guese discoverers left a line of religious names up and 
down the coast of Brazil and Columbus called the 
first land which he found San Salvador in gratitude 
to God for his safety. A " Te Deum " was chanted. 
Shortly after the planting of the royal standard, a 
rude cross was set up. The seven natives whom he 
took back to Spain were baptized, with the Spanish 
monarchs as sponsors. This was the first fruit of the 
extensive harvest which Rome was to reap in the 
new world. 

"3 



114 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

Pizarro, on his voyage to Peru, was required to take priests 
or monks in every vessel. This became the fixed rule for 
all expeditions to America. Velasquez wrote to Cortes to 
remember that the chief purpose of his expedition was the 
conversion of the natives. " He was to take the most care- 
ful care to omit nothing which might redound to the service 
of God." The principal standard of Cortes was of black 
velvet, embroidered with gold, and emblazoned with a red 
cross amidst flames of blue and white, with this motto in 
Latin beneath : " Friends, let us follow the cross, and under 
this sign, if we have faith, we shall conquer." 

Cortes himself exhorted his troops to rely on God, who 
had never deserted the Spaniard in his fight with the heathen. 
Mass was said and the expedition sailed under the joint pro- 
tection of St. Peter and St. James. This was the spirit of 
the conquerors. They might lead very immoral lives; they 
might be guilty of avarice and untold deeds of cruelty and 
bloodshed; but they were devout Catholics, upheld by a 
strong, if superstitious, faith in the righteousness of their 
cause. They were soldiers of the Cross, fighting in a holy 
war; and their careers form the last chapter of medieval 
chivalry. 1 

The Papal bull of 1493 which divided the nev\^ 
world between Portugal and Spain enjoined " the 
sending out of missionaries apt to teach and of vir- 
tuous life, who should convert the natives in all lands 
to be discovered." And this same year, as Brown has 
summarized the story of the beginnings: 

Bernardo Boil, first apostolic vicar to the New World, 
landed in Haiti as superior of a band of twelve missionaries, 
one of whom was Marchena, the friend of Columbus. Mar- 
chena built, in the town of Isabella, a rude church, the first 
in the New World. By 1505 the Franciscans of Haiti, Cuba 
and Jamaica had so increased in numbers that they united 
to form the province of Santa Cruz. . . . 

In 1514, the bishopric of Darien, the first on the mainland, 
was erected; and that same year Las Casas baptized a thou- 
sand children on a trip through Cuba. . . . 
* Brown, " Latin America," J2i. 



THE PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY II5 

Valencia and his companions, known as the twelve apostles 
of Mexico, toiled barefoot all the way from Vera Cruz to 
Mexico City, where they were received by Cortes and his 
captains with a great show of reverence. . . , The Jesuits 
went everywhere, but special praise has been given to their 
work among the Indians in Paraguay, Brazil and Northern 
Mexico, reaching into California and other portions of our 
own Southwest. 

In the earlier days, Franciscans and Dominicans, not to 
mention monks of many other orders, and secular priests, 
were even more prominent. There was a keen rivalry be- 
tween the secular and the regular clergy. . . . From the 
towns built by their compatriots, they went forth in groups, 
by twos, or even singly; and scattered themselves over the 
entire country. They were undeterred by any obstacle and 
undaunted by any danger. They endured the severest priva- 
tions, and many lost their lives from the fatigues of toil, the 
ravages of disease, or the violence of hostile savages. They 
counted it all joy to thus win the martyr's crown. A tone 
of intense devotion and religious fervor characterizes the 
personal memoirs of these heroic pioneers.^ 

Not all the priests who came to the new world 
were men like Las Casas. It was a priest named 
Luque who financed Pizarro's first gold-hunting ex- 
pedition down the coast from Darien. It was another 
priest, Valmeda, who acted as Pizarro's mouthpiece 
in demanding at Cajamarca the Inca monarch's sub- 
mission to Charles V and who called on the Spaniards 
to slaughter the Indians, " Fall on, Castilians ; I ab- 
solve you." And the general effects of the influence 
of the priests upon the people will appear — but there 
was the far nobler side, and there have from the be- 
ginning been men like Las Casas, who loved the Sa- 
viour and served Him and defended and befriended 
and uplifted the people in their care. It was due to 
the influence of such men at the beginning that the 

* Brown, " Latin America," 64-67. 



Il6 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

policy of exploiting the Indians without mercy or re- 
straint was denounced by the Church in the bull of 
Paul III in 1537, declaring that 

the said Indians and all other peoples who hereafter shall be 
brought to the notice of the Catholics, although they may be 
without the faith of Jesus Christ, in nowise are they to be 
deprived of their liberty and of the control of their goods, 
in nowise are they to be made slaves. . . . We also deter- 
mine and declare that the said Indians and other similar 
peoples are to be called to the faith of Jesus Christ by preach- 
ing and by the example of a good and holy life.^ 

The Church is to be honored for the stand which it 
took, even though it did not control the policy of its 
representatives all over South America, and though 
it was a long time before natives ceased to be ex- 
cluded from the full privileges of priestly orders, 
just as they are still kept out in Africa and Asia 
to-day. 

Many orders of priests poured into South Amer- 
ica to carry the Gospel and the Church over the con- 
tinent. The oldest establishments naturally are in Peru. 
Ecclesiastics accompanied Valdivia to Chile in 1540. 
Six years later one of them, Marmatijo, had been 
made Vicar of Chile by the Bishop of Cuzco. In 
1553 five Franciscans came from Lima to establish 
the Church in Santiago. The cathedral in Lima was 
begun in 1536 and consecrated in 1625. The first great 
Archbishop was Toribio, who was appointed in 1578 
and whose ecclesiastical province was the largest in 
the world in point of territory, embracing " almost 
the whole of South America, with a portion of what 
is now Central America. And yet," says Father Cur- 
rier, ** the saintly archbishop managed to hold three 

* Quoted by Brown, " Latin America," 70. 



THE PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY II7 

provincial councils. At the first of these, in 1583, 
the catechism, or * Doctrina Cristiana,' was ordered, 
which, composed, I believe, by the Jesuit Acosta, if 
not by Santo Toribio himself, was translated into the 
Quichua and Aymara tongues by the Jesuits, and 
printed by Ricardo in 1584. This was the first book 
ever printed in South America." ^ 

In the Hibbert Lectures for 1884, Dr. Albert Re- 
ville summarizes the character of the conversion of 
the Peruvians: 

It is no part of our task to tell the story of the conversion 
of the natives to Roman Catholic Christianity. It was com- 
paratively easily effected. The fall of the Incas was a mor- 
tal blow to the religious, no less than to the political, edifice 
in which they were the keystone of the arch. It was evident 
that the Sun had been unable or unwilling to protect his chil- 
dren. The conqueror imposed his religion on Peru, as on 
Mexico, by open force; and the Spanish Inquisition, though 
not giving rise to such numerous and terrible spectacles in 
the former as in the latter country, yet carried out its work 
of terror and oppression there too. The result was that 
peculiar character of the Catholicism of the natives of Peru 
which strikes every traveler, and consists in a kind of timid 
and superstitious submission, without confidence and without 
zeal, associated with the obstinate preservation of customs 
which mount back to the former religious regime, and with 
memories of the golden age of the Inca rule under which 
their ancestors were obliged to live, but which has gone to 
return no more.^ 

In Ecuador the Church was the most powerful in- 
fluence in making the country Spanish. Mr. Dawson 
says : 

Within a few years after the conquest a regular bishopric 
was established in Quito, and hundreds of priests and friars 

^ Currier, " Lands of the Southern Cross," 279, The oldest convent 
of nuns in Lima was founded in 1558. 

2 Reville, "The Native Religions of Mexico and Peru," 199-200. 



Il8 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

flocked over to take part in the wholesale evangelization of 
the heathen natives. The gospel was preached everywhere, 
churches and chapels built in even the smallest villages, the 
obdurate Indians were treated with scant ceremony, and it 
soon became well understood among the natives that a 
hearty acceptance of the Christian cult tended to keep them 
out of trouble. Ecuador quickly became one of the most 
devotedly Catholic countries in the world, and has ever since 
remained so.^ 

The great missionary body in South America was 
the Jesuit order. Other priests of a less satisfactory 
character had preceded them. 

In the days of the Spanish conquest, Franciscan monks 
were the priests who most often accompanied the expeditions, 
and they took the most prominent part in the earliest estab- 
lishment of religion. The members of this Order, however, 
with a few notable exceptions, took no special interest in 
the evangelization of the aborigines. On the contrary, they 
were as fierce as the soldiers themselves in their cruelties to 
the poor Indians. ... It was the genius of Ignatius Loyola 
that conceived and perfected a machine able to carry Chris- 
tianity and civilization to these remote and inaccessible peo- 
ples and religions.2 

The order was founded in 1534. In 1541 Francis 
Xavier went out to the East Indies, and in 1549 six 
Jesuits with Nobrega at their head landed in Brazil 
with Thome de Souza, the first governor. After the 
founding of Bahia, Nobrega sent members of the 
order to the other colonies on the Brazilian coast. At 
Pernambuco they met opposition from the governor, 
who objected to having priests subject to a foreign 
corporation. "In Sao Paulo they labored hard, 
spread widely, converted a large number of Indians, 
and perfected their system, but it was there they came 

^ Dawson, " South American Republics," Vol. II, 30Sf. 
2 Ibid., Vol. I, 169. 



THE PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY II9 

most sharply in conflict with the spirit of individual- 
ism, and there they suffered their first and most 
crushing overthrow." ^ Here the great leader was 
the priest Anchieta, " one of the most notable men in 
the history of the order, whose genius, devotion and 
pertinacious courage laid the foundations of Jesuit 
power so deeply in South America that its effects re- 
main to this day." ^ His spirit is shown in his letter 
to Nobrega regarding the school he was sent to found : 

Here we are, sometimes more than twenty of us together 
in a little hut of mud and wicker, roofed with straw, four- 
teen paces long and ten wide. This is at once the school, the 
infirmary, dormitory, refectory, kitchen, and storeroom. Yet 
we covet not the more spacious dwelHngs which our breth- 
ren have in other parts. Our Lord Jesus Christ was in a 
far straiter place when it was His pleasure to be born among 
beasts in a manger, and in a still straiter when He deigned 
to die upon the cross.^ 

The Paulistas, as the Portuguese and Creole settlers 
in Sao Paulo were called, warred against the mission- 
aries and the Indians whom they were seeking to 
protect and train. They '' destroyed the Jesuit mis- 
sions in their neighborhood and became the most 
expert in Indian warfare and the most terrible foes 
of the Jesuit system of all the colonists of South 
America. Thdr determined opposition was the most 
potent cause in preventing the subjection of South 
America to a theocratic system of government." * 

Jesuit missionaries arrived in Bolivia within twenty- 
five years after Loyola had founded the order. 

They established an important mission on the banks of 
Lake Titicaca in 1577, and five years later introduced the 

1 Dawson, " South American Republics," Vol. I, 328. 

2 Ibid., Vol. I, 329. 3 Ibid., Vol. I, 33of. * Ibid., Vol. I, 170. 



120 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

printing-press in order to distribute among their proselytes 
grammars and catechisms in the native tongues. In the 
seventeenth century they succeeded in penetrating down the 
eastern slope of the Andes and across the great central plain 
to the outlying hills of the Brazilian mountain system, where 
they established several missions among the Chiquitos In- 
dians They even reached the grassy prairies which lie three 
hundred miles north of the inner angle of the great plateau, 
converted the Mojos, and taught them to herd cattle/ 

The great triumph of the Jesuits was in the far in- 
terior of southern Brazil, in upper Uruguay and in 
Paraguay. The Fathers entered Paraguay about 1586 
and their success was wonderful. Learning accu- 
rately the language of the people, studying their 
prejudices and conforming to them, teaching them 
trades and better methods of agriculture, gathering 
them into towns with comfortable dwelHngs and good 
storehouses, they introduced a new era in southeast- 
ern Paraguay and founded a Jesuit republic in the 
province of Guayra, which is now Brazilian territory. 
Here they seemed secure in the heart of the conti- 
nent, but once again the Paulistas — seeking Indian 
slaves, hating the Jesuit theocratic order, claiming the 
land for white settlers, and, as Portuguese, eager to 
drive back Spanish occupation — fell upon the de- 
fenseless missionaries and wrought havoc with the 
results of the Jesuits' devoted labor. Driven out from 
Guayra, the missionaries enlarged their labor in Para- 
guay and the ruins of their buildings show how great 
were their establishments. 

Doom fell upon the Jesuit missions in South Amer- 
ica at the end of the eighteenth century, to the dis- 
tress of the poor people who had found in them 
protection and prosperity. In 1760 the Jesuits were 

* Dawson, " South American Republics," Vol. II, 245. 



THE PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY 121 

expelled from Brazil. It was charged that they were 
mining precious metals by slave labor without giving 
the government its share. They were the only per- 
sons whom the government feared. In 1767 Spain 
followed Portugal and France in the expulsion of the 
Jesuits from all her dominions. " In the neighbor- 
hood of Lima alone they owned five thousand negro 
slaves and property to the value of two million dol- 
lars, and every penny of their immense accumulations 
was confiscated by the government." ^ 

On the upper Parana the Jesuits had thousands of 
Indians disciplined and well-armed and devoted to 
them, but they offered no resistance to the decrees of 
expulsion but took peaceably the spoiling of their 
goods. It was not many years before they were back 
again in many of the South American lands, but 
meanwhile their w^ork was shattered and it was never 
restored. The " Cambridge Modern History " de- 
clares the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767 to have 
been " the greatest blow inflicted on the Indies since 
the conquest. ... It was also a great shock to the 
missions and to European influence on the fron- 
tiers. ... A great part of the ground lost was 
never regained; indeed some interior parts of South 
America were less known to white men in 1850 than 
in 1750." 2 

What has been said of the Jesuit missions shows 
that the bull of Paul III was not a dead letter but 
that earnest efforts were put forth to teach and im- 
prove the Indians. But the medieval delusions had 
come with the men whose education had been under 
these delusions. The end of external conformity was 
a sufficient end, and any means were justified which 

* Dawson, " South American Republics," Vol. II, 71. ^ Vol. X, 271. 



122 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

promised its attainment. Towns were baptized en 
masse. The protection of the Church drew multi- 
tudes to its communion. The Hmitation of the right 
of inheritance to baptized children was an effectual 
pressure. When the Church took away native cus- 
toms the Indian found all that he had cherished con- 
secrated in the new worship. A more splendid ritual 
than he had ever dreamed of overawed him. But 
there were also true efforts made to teach and evan- 
gelize and there were men devoted even unto death, 
who went to and fro preaching the Gospel as they 
knew it in their Church and age.^ 

The Inquisition played its part also in the new 
world. It was introduced into Peru in 1570 and for 
years the present senate building of the Peruvian 
government was the Inquisition tribunal. The first 
auto da fe was celebrated in 1573 on the great plaza 
of Lima. Lima in Peru and Cartagena in Colombia 
were the two chief centers of the Inquisition. The 
South American historians declare that hundreds of 
thousands of victims were sacrificed. The traveler is 
told weird tales still as he stands under the richly 
carved ceiling of the senate hall in Lima or in the 
old cathedral at Cartagena with the iron gratings on 
its windows said to have been the grills of the dark 
days when men were burned over fires to make them 
believe. The Inquisition was not used against the 
Indians but its awful processions and the knowledge 
of its dread power impressed their imaginations and 
wielded a great persuasion. During all these years 
South America knew but one religion. A rigid unity 
crushed all freedom and made intellectual or spiritual 
growth an impossibility. The weakening dominance 

1 See Brown, " Latin America," 76-102. 




Statue of General Bolivar, and Senate Building, 

Lima, Peru 

The Senate Building was formerly part of the old Inquisition 




Santa Lucia, a Pleasure Ground of Santiago, Chile 



THE PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY I23 

for generations of religious orders and the black 
blight of the Inquisition are part of the inheritance 
with which the continent has still to struggle. But 
the Inquisition is gone forever and the religious 
orders, which the popular hatred of the Dominicans, 
because of the Inquisition, helped to overthrow, and 
which are now regaining some of their power, can 
never again be what they were in the colonial days. 

And what were the real results of the work of the 
Church in these colonial days in terms of religion 
and social life? Let three witnesses who cannot be 
accused of anti-Roman prejudice answer as to the 
conditions in the sixteenth century. 

First, the Mexican historian, General Vicente Riva 
Palacio : 

The people conquered by the Spaniards in the Indies did 
not have even a remote idea of Christian doctrine or Cath- 
olic worship ; but they looked upon their conversion to that 
doctrine and worship as a necessary consequence of their 
defeat in battle, as an indispensable requisite which affirmed 
their vassalage and slavery to the Spanish monarch; since, 
as this was the principal motive which the conquerors as- 
signed for the invasion, they, however rude we may suppose 
them to have been, knew that on the outcome of the cam- 
paign depended the religion which they were to have in the 
future, since they would have to adopt that of the Christians 
as soon as these were victorious.^ 

Second, Father Currier: 

Peru, wuth all its advantages and churches innumerable, 
has known to an alarming extent the decline of religion, and 
though to-day there is a marked improvement over the 
past, there still remains much to be desired. As far back 
as the sixteenth century, a frightful state of religious neg- 
lect must have existed in Lima, if we accept the statement 
of the Jesuit Oliva, who gives the credit for the first im- 
^ Quoted by Brown, " Latin America," 74. 



124 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

pulse toward reform to the Fathers of his own Society. 
Those were the days of the many lawless adventurers and 
fortune hunters who were pouring into the new world, 
which, as Cervantes remarked in his day, was the dumping 
ground for Spain. . . . 

Strange times those were, indeed, according to our views, 
when the bull-fights on the Plaza Mayor were attended not 
only by the vice-regal court, but by the religious communi- 
ties, and by the archbishop himself. Bull-fights, alternating 
with an occasional auto da fe furnished periodical excite- 
ment to the people of Lima. The auto da fe has gone; but 
the bull-fight still endures.^ 

Third, the Hon. Thomas C. Dawson, for many 
years in the American diplomatic service in South 
America, who dedicates his book on the South Ameri- 
can Republics, one of the best books in English on 
the history and development of South America, to his 
wife, as " the history of her native continent" : 

It is impossible not to admire the courage, shrewdness, and 
devotion of the Jesuits. They went out alone among the 
savage tribes, living with them, learning their languages, 
preaching to them, captivating their imaginations by the 
pomp of religious paraphernalia and processions, baptizing 
them, and exhorting them to abandon cannibalism and polyg- 
amy. Tireless and fearless, they plunged into an interior 
hitherto unpenetrated by white men. . . . 

The Indians were easily induced to conform to the exter- 
nals of the Christian cult. Wherever the Jesuits penetrated, 
the aborigines soon adopted Christianity, but to hold the In- 
dians to Christianity the Fathers were obliged to fix them 
to the soil. As soon as a tribe was converted, a rude church 
building was erected, and a Jesuit installed, who remained 
to teach agriculture and the arts as well as ritual and morals. 
His moral and intellectual superiority made him perforce an 
absolute ruler in miniature. Thus that strange theocracy 
came into being, which, starting on the Brazilian coast, spread 
over most of central South America. In the early part of 

* Currier, "Lands of the Southern Cross," 28if. 



THE PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY 1 25 

the seventeenth century the theocratic seemed likely to be- 
come the dominant form of government south of the Ama- 
zon and east of the Andes. . . . 

Primarily, at least, the Jesuit purpose was altruistic, though 
the material advantages and the fascination of exercising 
authority were soon potent motives. The Jesuits gave the 
South American Indian the greatest measure of peace and 
justice he ever enjoyed, but they reduced him to blind obe- 
dience and made him a tenant and a servant. Though vir- 
tually a slave, he was, however, little exposed to infection 
from the vices and diseases of civilization ; he was not put 
at tasks too hard for him; and under Jesuit rule he pros- 
pered. On the other hand, if this system had prevailed there 
would have been little white immigration, the Indian race 
would have remained in possession of the country, and real 
civilization would never have gained a foothold.^ 

And while two centuries must have availed to famil- 
iarize the South American people with the Roman 
Catholic Church, the statement of Mr. Kirkpatrick 
in the " Cambridge Modern History," planned by- 
Lord Acton, the greatest Roman Catholic historian 
whom England has produced, indicates that what 
Father Currier says of Peru in the sixteenth cen- 
tury was true of South America generally at the close 
of the eighteenth : 

The same license pervaded the Church. The complaint re- 
curs throughout that the clergy are recruited from two 
sources : some are the outcasts of Spanish parishes and mon- 
asteries; others are Creoles, either idle and dissolute men 
driven by disgrace or want to take Orders, or else men put 
into religion by their parents with a view of getting a doc- 
trina or Indian parish and making a fortune out of the In- 
dians. Many benefices, including most of the doctrinas, were 
by special dispensation in the hands of regular clergy almost 
exempt from episcopal control. The rule of celibacy was 
generally evaded; religious duties were hurried through, and 

^ Dawson, " South American Republics," Vol. I, 326-328. 



126 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

the instruction of Indians was reduced to an absurdity; 
amidst general immorality in the towns, the regulars set the 
worst example, making their monasteries places of license 
and pleasure. The quadrennial chapters of the Orders held 
for the election of provincial prelates were scandalous scenes 
of disorder and strife — Creoles and Europeans contending 
for these lucrative posts, which held the patronage, subject 
to vice-regal confirmation, of all the parishes administered 
by the Order; the victor was conducted home by the idlers 
of the town, waving banners and clashing castanets. From 
1629 the different Orders were successively commanded to 
elect a European and a Creole alternately. At the first Fran- 
ciscan election held in Lima in 1680 under this rule the 
Creole padres resisted the command, made a murderous at- 
tack upon the commissary-general of their Order, and fought 
in the streets against the infantry sent to suppress the dis- 
turbance. The scandals of these chapters recur in vice-regal 
and episcopal reports down to the nineteenth century. But 
there were large exceptions to these disorders; the missions 
required and found self-sacrificing and devoted priests ; the 
Franciscans were better than the other Orders ; and the Jesu- 
its observed admirable conduct, maintaining the same dis- 
cipline as in Europe, expelling unworthy members and de- 
voting themselves in their colleges to education, to study, 
and to religious and charitable ministrations.^ 

II. The problem of Religious Liberty. During all 
these centuries the Roman Church had entire control of 
religious instruction in South America. More than this, 
it had control often of the government or, with occa- 
sional exceptions, was the dominant political influence. 
When the movement of political emancipation came and 
South America passed out from the control of the Ro- 
man Catholic kingdom of Spain, the movement was 
strictly political and explicitly disavowed any hostility 
to the Church which was so closely identified with 
Spain and Portugal as political forces. The Venezuelan 
declaration of independence stated that in asserting 

^ " Cambridge Modern History," Vol. X, 252, 253. 



THE PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY 12/ 

independence the people ratified their desire " of be- 
lieving and defending the Holy Catholic and Apostolic 
Religion of Jesus Christ/' It was indicative of the 
powerful hold the Church had upon the minds of the 
people that they protested loyalty to the Church and 
refused to include her in their opposition to Spain 
and in their assertion of freedom, in spite of the fact 
that she had been used as a powerful repressive 
agency against tliem and that her influence and the 
influence of her priests had been almost wholly on 
the royalist side. As the Argentine manifesto as- 
serted of the Spanish course, *' They propagated 
against us atrocious calumnies, attributing to us the 
design of destroying our sound religion, of setting 
aside all morality and establishing licentiousness of 
manners. They carried on a war of reHgion against 
us, devising many and various plots to agitate and 
alarm the consciences of the people, by causing the 
Spanish bishops to issue edicts of ecclesiastical cen- 
sure and interdiction among the faithful, to publish 
ex-communications and by means of some ignorant 
confessors, to sow fanatical doctrines in the tribunal of 
penance. By the aid of such religious discords, they 
have sown dissension in families, produced quarrels 
between parents and their children, torn asunder the 
bonds which united man and wife, scattered impla- 
cable enmity and rancor among brothers formerly the 
most affectionate, and even placed nature herself in a 
state of hostility and variance." In spite of all this, 
the new republics protested their devotion to the 
Church and without exception declared the Roman 
Catholic Church to be the established Church and in- 
terdicted all others. There were, however, discus- 
sions as to the propriety of denying freedom of re- 



128 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

ligion and Bolivar himself, addressing the Venezuelan 
Congress in 1819, expressed regret that the new con- 
stitution forbade religious liberty and said, " No re- 
ligious creed or profession should be prescribed in a 
political constitution." 

The new republics soon discovered that in freeing 
themselves from the Roman Catholic powers, they 
had not secured their liberty. The Church was still 
with them and its radical hostility to free institutions 
which had been unperceived during the disturbance 
of war now began to reveal itself. Political parties 
formed themselves on the issue of progress and lib- 
erty or conservatism and Latin Catholicism. The 
conservative parties got the name of " clericals." ^ 
Questions arose as to the appointment of bishops. 
Should the right, formerly exercised by the Spanish 
government, be exercised by the new governments 
or revert to the Church? The Church and religious 
orders were immensely wealthy. Questions of taxa- 
tion arose. Were the religious orders to be exempt? 
Should the Church be allowed to roll in wealth, while 
poverty oppressed the government, to which, under 
constitutional principles with an established Church, 
the Church owed everything? 

The issue of religious liberty arose also in connec- 
tion with immigration. Brazil and Argentina espe- 
cially wanted immigrants from northern Europe and 
they soon came. But when they came the impossi- 
biUty of the conditions under which they had to live 
emerged. The young people wished to marry. They 
could not do so, for there was no civil marriage. The 
only marriage was marriage in the Roman Church. 
Children were born. If born out of Roman marriage 

^ Rankin, " Twenty Years Among the Mexicans," 75. 



THE PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY I29 

they were deemed illegitimate. They could not be 
baptized. There was only Roman baptism. And un- 
baptized they were incapable of the inheritance of 
property. And old people died. There were no ceme- 
teries in which they could be laid to rest. The Roman 
Church absolutely controlled the burial grounds and 
admitted to them only Roman Catholic dead. The 
leading minds of South America saw at once the im- 
possibility of the situation. As Alberdi, one of the 
foremost publicists of Argentina, wrote, " Spanish 
America, reduced to CathoHcism, with the exclusion 
of any other cult, represents a solitary and silent con- 
vent of monks. The dilemma is fatal — either Catho- 
lic and unpopulated, or populated and prosperous and 
tolerant in the matter of religion. To invite the 
Anglo-Saxon race and the people of Germany, Swe- 
den and Switzerland and deny them the exercise of 
their worship is to offer them a sham hospitality and 
to exhibit a false liberalism. To exclude the dissent- 
ing cults from South America is to exclude the Eng- 
lish, the German, the Irish and the North American, 
who are not Catholics, that is to say, the inhabitants 
whom this continent most needs. To bring them with- 
out their cult is to bring them without the agent that 
makes them what they are, and to compel them to live 
without religion and to become atheists." 

Under free institutions, moreover, men began to 
think freely. They learned more of the world and 
by comparison came to understand more clearly the 
real character and corruption of the Church. They 
saw also that their free institutions were doomed un- 
less they secured them not only against Spain and 
Portugal, but also against a far more subtle and 
powerful foe, even Rome itself. Mexico, as the most 



130 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

enlightened of the new Latin Republics, faced the 
issue first. She felt its reality in her own situation.^ 
Maximilian, himself, issued a manifesto to the Church 
in which he said, " Confess, my well esteemed pre- 
lates, that the Mexican Church, by a lamentable fa- 
tality has mingled too much in politics and in affairs 
of temporal possessions, neglecting in consequence 
the Catholic instruction of its flocks." The long 
struggle in Mexico for liberty from Spain and then 
from Europe ended at last in political independence, 
and also in independence from Rome, when on Febru- 
ary 5, 1867, a new constitution was issued which pro- 
vided for freedom of religion. 

Sooner or later the same issue arose in each of the 
new states, the republics striving for a healthy de- 
velopment in freedom and the wholesome privilege of 
enlightened self-government and the Church as con- 
stantly throwing her influence against such develop- 
ment and in favor of medievalism, popular ignorance 
and ecclesiastical autocracy. In 1852, the Pope de- 
nounced the movement in New Granada toward re- 
ligious liberty, which decreed the expulsion of the 
Jesuits, a curtailment of Church revenues, free educa- 
tion, freedom of the press and freedom of public and 
private worship. These " nefarious decrees," the Pope 
condemned and declared to be " null and void." In 
October, 1864, Pius IX wrote to Maximilian : 

Your majesty is well aware that in order effectively to re- 
pair the evil occasioned by the revolution and to bring back 
as soon as possible happy days for the Church, the Catholic 
religion must, above all things, continue to be the glory and 
mainstay of the Mexican nation to the exclusion of every 
other dissenting worship; that the bishops must be perfectly 

1 See Wilson, " Mexico," 323. 



THE PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY I3I 

free in the exercise of their pastoral ministry; that the re- 
ligious orders should be reestablished or reorganized; that 
no person may obtain the faculty of teaching false and sub- 
versive tenets; that instruction, whether public or private, 
should be directed and watched over by the ecclesiastical 
authority, and that, in short, the chains may be broken which 
up to the present time have held the Church in a state of 
self-dependence and subject to the arbitrary rule of civil 
Government.^ 

In December of the same year, the Pope issued an 
encyclical addressed to all " patriarchs, primates, arch- 
bishops and bishops in connection with the apostolic 
See throughout the world," in which he set forth the 
following positions : 

1. The Catholic Church ought fully to exercise until the 
end of time a " salutary force, not only with regard to each 
individual man, but with regard to nations, peoples and their 
rulers." 

2. The best condition of society is that in which the power 
of the laity is compelled to inflict the penalties of law upon 
violators of the Catholic religion. 

3. The opinion that " liberty of conscience and of worship 
is the right of every man,'" is not only " an erroneous opin- 
ion, very hurtful to the safety of the Catholic Church and of 
souls," l3ut is also " delirious." 

4. Liberty of speech and the press is "the liberty of per- 
dition." 

5. The judgments of the Holy See, even when they do not 
speak of faith and morals, claim acquiescence and obedience, 
under pain of sin and loss of the Catholic profession. 

6. It is false to say " that every man is free to embrace 
and profess the religion he shall believe true," or that those 
who " embrace and profess any religion may obtain eternal 
salvation." 

7. The " Church has the power of availing herself of force, 
or of direct or indirect temporal power."' 

1 Lefevre, " History of the French Intervention in Mexico," Vol. II, 
16; Appleton's "Universal Cyclopedia," 1865, 749. Quoted by Butler, 
" Mexico in Transition," 180. 



132 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

8. In a legal conflict "between the ecclesiastical and civil 
powers," the ecclesiastical " ought to prevail." 

9. It is a false and pernicious doctrine that " public schools 
should be opened without distinction to all children of the 
people and free from all ecclesiastical authority." 

10. It is false to say that the " principle of non-intervention 
must be proclaimed and observed." 

11. It is necessary in the present day that the Catholic re- 
ligion shall be held as the only religion of the state to the 
exclusion of all other modes of worship.^- 

The American republics were gradually forced to 
recognize, accordingly, that the establishment of the 
Roman Catholic Church as the exclusive Church 
meant the deliberate rejection of those agencies and 
institutions of liberty, without which they could call 
their states republics, but could not call their people 
free. One by one, accordingly, they have been deny- 
ing the autocracy of Rome as they denied at the be- 
ginning of the nineteenth century the autocracy of 
Spain. There is now practical religious liberty in 
every South American land. It came last in Peru 
and Bolivia. The Inquisition was not abolished in 
these two lands till 1821 and '' as late as 1836, the 
penalty was death for holding any worship other than 
the Roman Catholic in Bolivia and Peru." ^ 

Yet, Church and State are not separated in South 
America. Indeed, Brazil is the only South American 
country whose constitution provides for full relig- 
ious liberty and gives no political precedence to the 
Roman Catholic Church. The fifth article of the 
Constitution of the Empire provided, *' The Roman 
Catholic shall continue to be the one established re- 

^ Butler, " Mexico in Transition," i97f., quoting Encylical from The 
Christian Advocate, New York, 1865. 

2 " Protestant Missions in South America," 148. 



THE PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY 1 33 

ligion of the State; all other religions shall, however, 
be tolerated with their special worship in private 
houses, and in houses designated for the purpose, 
without the exterior form of a temple." But the Con- 
stitution of the Republic guarantees perfect religious 
liberty and freedom of worship and debars no man 
from any office because of his religious belief. The 
Government pays money for charitable institutions, 
such as the large hospital in Rio, which are under the 
Church, but the Roman Catholic sisters are the only 
persons available as yet for the administration of 
such institutions. It no longer supports the priests 
as it did under the monarchy. There has been of 
late, however, a great ultramontane revival. Many 
of the Spanish priests expelled from the Philippines 
by the rebellion there, came to Brazil and the Church 
has apparently rekindled its purpose to dominate the 
land. 

In Chile, the Church is legally established and re- 
ceives a subsidy, listed in the annual budget of the 
Government, of approximately 1,000,000 pesos. Full 
religious toleration, however, has been guaranteed 
and in 1888, the Government granted the Presby- 
terian Mission a charter, stating that '* those who pro- 
fess the Reformed Church religion according to the 
doctrines of Holy Scripture may promote primary 
and superior instruction, according to modern methods 
and practices and propagate the worship of their be- 
lief, obedient to the laws of the land." The Church 
of Rome naturally has still its special privileges and 
has retained immense wealth. 

Its property in Santiago alone is said to be worth more than 
$100,000,000 in gold. It owns some of the best business 
blocks in the city. The whole of one side of the Plaza, which 



134 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

is the centre as well as the most valuable of Santiago busi- 
ness property, is taken up by the palace of the Archbishop 
and the Cathedral, and there is other property in the neigh- 
borhood which belongs to the Church. It has acres of stores, 
thousands of rented houses and vast haciendas, upon which 
wines and other products are manufactured and offered for 
sale. Nearly all is controlled by the Archbishop, although 
much of the church property is held by the different organi- 
zations. The Carmelite nuns of Santiago are the richest body 
of women in South America, if not in the world.^ 

The state also makes appropriations from the public 
funds for the support of the parish clergy and of 
Church schools and for the erection of churches.^ 

In Bolivia the Roman Catholic religion is the re- 
ligion of the state to the exclusion of other cults, 
but these are freely tolerated. The law is not ob- 
served which until a few years ago stood on the 
statute books as Article 195 of Chapter III of the 
Section of the Penal Code of Bolivia that treats of 
" Crimes against the Religion of the State." 

Whoever conspires directly and in fact to establish any 
other religion in Bolivia, or aims at having the Republic cease 
to profess the Catholic Apostolic Roman religion, is a traitor, 
and shall suffer the death penalty.^ 

In Peru there has been a long struggle, and though 
the Church is established and the Papal representa- 
tive, as in Colombia, is ex-officio head of the diplo- 
matic corps, yet still there is full practical liberty 
recognized by the decision of the Supreme Court in 
releasing and acquitting Mr. Penzotti, who was im- 
prisoned for preaching fifteen years ago.* The Con- 
stitution of Peru, however, still declares : " The Na- 

1 Carpenter, " South America," 228. 

2 "Protestant Missions in South America," 136. 

' Quoted by Lee, " Religious Liberty in South America," 12. 
*Ibid., 14, i5» 48. 



THE PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY I35 

tion professes the Apostolic Roman Catholic religion ; 
the State protects it, and does not permit the public 
exercise of any other." ^ 

The movement of religious liberation in South 
America contains many alternations. A republic 
which has taken, under liberal guidance, advanced 
ground on questions of freedom of religion and free 
education, may under clerical control reverse all its 
progress, while a state which has been dominated by 
the Church in the most degrading way may suddenly 
break through its enslavement into liberty. Colombia 
illustrates the former course and Ecuador the latter. 

In 1888, President Arthur sent Mr. W. E. Curtis 
to South America as a special commissioner to in- 
vestigate the prevailing conditions, with reference, of 
course, to the prospects of trade. This was the judg- 
ment he formed of Ecuador: 

The priests had such a hold upon the people, that liberty- 
could not live in an atmosphere which they polluted and the 
country lapsed into a state of anarchy which has continued 
ever since. ... It is the only country in America in which 
the Romish Church survives as the Spaniards left it. . . . 
The rule which prevails everywhere that the less a people 
are under the control of that Church, the better their pros- 
perity, enlightenment and progress, is illustrated in Ecuador 
with striking force. One-fourth of all the property in 
Ecuador belongs to the Bishop. There is a Catholic Church 
for every 150 inhabitants; of the population of the country, 
ten per cent are priests, monks or nuns, and 272 of the 365 
days of the year are observed as feast or fast days. The 
priests control the Government in all its branches, dictate its 
laws and govern their enforcement and rule the country as 
absolutely as if the Pope were its king.2 

There could be no hope of evangelical work in such 

^ Lee, " Religious Liberty in South America," 13. 
2 Curtis, " Capitals of South America," 306. 



136 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

a land. Since 1895, however, a complete change has 
taken place. The Rev. T. B. Wood, D.D., for more 
than thirty years a missionary in South America, 
wrote on February 25, 1902 : 

Ecuador is surpassing all other South American countries 
in the speed of its new progress. As late as 1895, its con- 
stitution excluded all worship but the Roman Catholic ab- 
solutely. Now it ensures full religious liberty. Then the 
civil power was subject to a concordat with the Pope, making 
it practically subordinate to the ecclesiastical power. Now 
all ecclesiastical functionaries, from the primate down, are 
subalterns of the Government. Then all ecclesiastical prop- 
erty belonged wholly to the ecclesiastical authorities. Now 
it belongs to boards of trustees appointed by the civil au- 
thorities and subject to the civil power. Then the school 
laws allowed none but Catholics to teach in any kind of 
school, or even give private lessons. Now a Methodist Pre- 
siding Elder is commissioned to organize the new system 
of normal schools, whose directors are all Protestants, and 
whose basal principles, defined in executive decrees, are the 
great principles common to evangelical Protestants and 
evangelical Catholics. Then the Customs House confiscated 
Bibles and evangelical books presented for importation and 
a high official declared that so it should be while Mount 
Chimborazo stood in its place. Since then, tons of Bibles 
have been carried over the shoulders of Mount Chimborazo 
and colportage is compassing the whole land. Then both 
Houses of Congress contained priests and prelates as the 
ruling elements. Now all ecclesiastics are ineligible for Con- 
gress. Then the Senate expelled a liberal because he had 
been excommunicated. Now, at the last session of Congress, 
the Senate rejected proposals toward reconciling Church 
and State, after they had been agreed to by the executive 
and confirmed by the Pope, and the Lower House passed a 
marriage law, putting Protestants and Catholics on exact 
equality.^ 

* Letter published in South American Magazine, May, 1902, 116; see 
article " Ecuador, the Republic of the Sacred Heart," Missionary Re- 
view of the World, November, 1901, 808-814; Vincent, "Around and 
About South America," 33; Carpenter, "South America," 71- 



THE PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY I37 

There have been reactions since and the progress has 
not been all that could be desired but the country has 
held to its liberal course. 

In Colombia after a liberal regime during which 
the country made steady progress and there was relig- 
ious liberty and increasing enlightenment, the clerical 
party regained power, and its influence has resulted 
in almost ruining the land and in subjecting it again 
to medievalism. The Church has since had full con- 
trol of the situation. Roman Catholicism is constitu- 
tionally declared to be the religion of the people. 
There is a formal concordat between the Papacy and 
the Government. Art. i of this concordat recognizes 
the Roman Catholic Religion as that of Colombia, and 
obliges the Government to protect it, and cause it to be 
respected, in all its rights. Art. 2 reads : " The Catho- 
lic Church shall preserve its full liberty and independ- 
ence of the civil power, and consequently without any 
intervention from the civil power, it can exercise free- 
ly all its spiritual authority and ecclesiastical jurisdic- 
tion, and conform its own government to its own 
laws." Art. 3 provides " The canonic legislation is 
independent of the civil law and forms no part of it ; 
but it shall be solemnly respected by all the authorities 
of the Republic." Arts. 4, 5 and 6 grant the Church 
the right to hold property. Art. 7 exempts the clergy 
from civil and military duty. Art. 8 reads : " The 
Government is obliged to adopt in the laws of criminal 
procedure dispositions that will save the priestly dig- 
nity, whenever for any motive a minister of the 
Church may have to figure in a process." Art. 9 
grants to the Church the right to collect by law dues, 
etc., from the faithful to whom service is rendered. 
Arts. 10 and 11 allow the Church freely to establish 



138 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

religious orders and to govern them according to its 
own regulations, and pledge the Church to co-operate 
with the Government in works of charity, education 
and missions. Arts. 12, 13 and 14, already quoted 
in connection with the object of education in South 
America, turn over the control of education, body 
and soul, to the Church. 

The concordat and legislation passed in accordance 
with it put marriage in the hands of the Church, and 
Colombian Law No. 30, of the year 1888, contains the 
following articles: 

Art. 34. Marriage contracted in conformity with 
the rites of the Catholic religion annuls " ipso jure " 
the purely civil marriage contracted before by the 
parties with other persons. 

Art. 35. For merely civil effects the law recognizes 
the legitimacy of the children conceived before a civil 
marriage is annulled in virtue of the provision of the 
previous article. 

Art. 36. The man who having been married civilly, 
afterwards marries another woman according to the 
rites of the Catholic religion, is obliged to furnish 
proper support to the first woman and the children 
had by her so long as she does not marry according 
to the Catholic rite. 

In spite of all this there is religious toleration in Co- 
lombia and other Churches than the Roman Catholic 
are entitled to worship freely and to propagate their 
faith. 

In the Argentine the second article of the consti- 
tution declares, " The Federal Government supports 
the Apostolic Roman Catholic Church " and the presi- 
dent and vice-president must belong to the Roman 
Church. Nevertheless freedom of religion is guaran- 



THE PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY 1 39 

teed to all. Uruguay is also constitutionally allied to 
the Roman Church and the Archbishop in Monte- 
video has a voice in the Government, but there is no 
restriction upon any form of religion. In Venezuela 
the Roman Church is the state religion and the Gov- 
ernment contributes to its support, but here also all 
Churches are tolerated. In every South American re- 
public, therefore, with the exception of Brazil, the 
Roman Catholic Church is the state Church, At the 
same time, either constitutionally or practically, as the 
result of the assertion of the right of religious lib- 
erty, religious toleration is accorded and the freedom 
of the human mind to face the fundamental questions 
of life and answer them unintimidated and uncoerced 
has been secured. 

The Church in South America has steadily antag- 
onized this right of religious liberty. It refuses still 
to accept civil marriage. Section 588 of the Acts and 
Decrees of the Council of Latin American Bishops in 
Rome in 1899 declares : 

Among the faithful matrimony cannot be granted, except 
at one and the same time it be a sacrament; and therefore, 
whatever other union there may be among Christians, of a 
man and a woman, apart from a sacrament, even if made 
by the force of the civil law, is nothing else than a shameful 
and pestilent concubinage {turpis et exitialis concubinatus) . 
. . . Therefore, let the faithful be taught in our regions, in all 
of which, without exception, the decree " Tametsi " of the 
Council of Trent is unquestionably promulgated and received, 
that no marriage is contracted without the presence of the 
proper priest, and that the offspring begotten from a civil 
union is illegitimate before God and the Church.^ 

And this opposition to civil marriage was extended 
by the Church in South America to every measure of 

* Quoted by Lee, " Religious Liberty in South America," 19. 



I40 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

religious liberty and toleration. It is easy to appre- 
ciate the position which the Church held. It had 
always controlled the situation. It believed that it 
alone was the Church of God and that it owed it to 
men's souls to hold them in its power. But it forgot 
that it could not hold them except by free persuasion 
and that the attempt to lord it over the human spirit 
is the sure way to alienate and embitter it. That the 
South American Church should attempt to bar free 
religious opinions by political exclusion is not to be 
wondered at when enlightened American Roman 
Catholics like Father Phelan of " The Western 
Watchman " hold the same view : 

We hold it as a part of enlightened statesmanship for 
them to protect the religious unity of their peoples and to 
prevent the preaching of any non- (Roman) Catholic faith 
by foreigners. Instead of enacting laws making the pubHc 
exercise of an imported non- (Roman) Catholic religion pos- 
sible, they should take effective measures to suppress it 
wherever it makes its offensive appearance, and to quaran- 
tine against it as they would against smallpox and yellow 
fever.i 

This accurately represents the attitude which the 
South American Church has taken toward religious 
liberty. 

1 •' The Western Watchman," February 6, 1898, 4. Quoted by Lee, 
" Religious Liberty in South America," 66. 



CHAPTER V 

PRESENT RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 

South America is claimed as a Roman Catholic con- 
tinent. The Roman Catholic religion is in varying 
form the state rehgion, as we have seen. It is legally- 
recognized as such in all but Brazil. Wherever 
religious data are given in the government cen- 
sus reports, practically the entire population is re- 
turned as Roman Catholic.^ Outside of Argentina, 
the Roman Catholic Church v^ould claim and the 
governments would assume, and the men of the vari- 
ous countries would for census purposes declare, that 
practically the entire population was Roman Catholic. 
The Roman Catholic Church bears accordingly the 
full church responsibility for the religious conditions. 
For three centuries she has been in complete control 
of the field and has had such opportunities for dom- 
inating the life of the continent as the Protestant 
Church separated from political power and with its 
sole appeal to the individual intelligence and con- 
science has never possessed. 

* In Brazil the census of 1890 divided the population of 14,333,915 
as follows: Roman Catholics, 14,179,615; Orthodox Catholics (Greek 
Church), 1,673; Evangelical, 19,957; Presbyterian, 1,317; other Prot- 
estant sects, 122,469; Islamites, 300; Positivists, 1,327; without cult, 
7,257. The Chile census of 1907 divided the total population of 3,249,- 
279 as follows: Roman Catholic, 98.05 per cent; Protestant, .98 per 
cent; Pagan, .75 per cent; no religion, .12 per cent; Mohammedan, .04 
per cent; Confucianists, .04 per cent; other religions, .02 per cent. 
These reports are typical. 

141 



142 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

The Roman Catholic Church, moreover, accepts 
the responsibility for South America. It claims the 
continent as a Roman Catholic continent. It is not a 
mission field in the eyes of the Vatican, as the United 
States until recently has been. The Church regards 
the whole population of South America as composed 
of its children. Father Phelan states the Roman 
Catholic claim as to Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador un- 
flinchingly : 

A people which enjoys oneness of belief should guard it 
as its very life. It should prevent the public exercise of any 
religion differing from the one it sanctions, without inter- 
fering with the liberty of individuals to believe and practice 
in private any religion they choose. If the Spanish Inquisi- 
tion did no more than punish the public practice of a hereti- 
cal faith, it would never have received the condemnation of 
(Roman) Catholic posterity. The three repubHcs against 
whose proscriptive laws Dr. Lee and his Methodist brethren 
complain are Roman Catholic States, whose peoples are all 
(Roman) Catholic, and among whom no Protestants are 
found.i 

These facts compel us candidly to acknowledge 
that our Protestant Missions in South America are to 
people whom the Roman Catholic Church calls Ro- 
man Catholics. And these Missions must be justified 
on this basis. If this can be done, it lays a heavy 
burden of responsibility upon the Church which 
allows such conditions to exist and covers them with 
its name, and especially upon the Roman Catholic 
Churches in other lands which are willing to neglect 
and even to defend the conditions in South America. 

We sought, while in South America, to investigate 
the whole question fairly and to see all that we could 
of the Roman Catholic Church and its work. We 

^ Quoted by Lee, " Religious Liberty in South America," 69. 



PRESENT RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS I43 

visited more than sixty churches and cathedrals, six 
hospitals, under the care of Sisters, four schools and 
seminaries, talked with Roman Catholic priests, lay- 
men and nuns, and with diplomatists, lawyers and 
doctors and business men, foreign and native, who 
had some of them a Christian faith and some no re- 
ligion at all. In the conferences with missionaries and 
natives, we always raised the question for honest an- 
swer : Are Protestant Churches in South America jus- 
tifiable? The religious problem is the one great sub- 
ject of conversation throughout South America. As 
typical of the common views a summary of opinions 
set forth at a luncheon of leaders of religious work, in- 
cluding a consul and a leading merchant, in Buenos 
Aires and the terse and intense reply of Professor 
Monteverde of the University of Uruguay, in Monte- 
video will suffice. The men in Buenos Aires said: 
" The work of Protestant Churches in South America 
is warranted ( i ) because the Roman Catholic Church 
which we know here is not in any true sense the Chris- 
tian Church; (2) because only the presence of the 
Protestant Church here can by its convicting influence 
make the Roman Church moral and upright; (3) be- 
cause if we do not do the work in the Argentine now, 
we shall have to do it later when it will be far harder 
and when our 6,000,000 will have become 50,000,000; 
(4) because the great mass of men in the Argentine 
are actually entirely outside the Church, without any 
religion, and there are no agencies trying to reach 
them; (5) because large and increasing bodies of 
Protestants from Great Britain, Germany, Denmark, 
and from among the Waldensians who have come 
here will be lost if the Protestant Churches do not 
follow them; (6) because the ideals which the Ro- 



144 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

man Church has held and realized in South Amer- 
ica are intolerable ideals and must be overthrown." 
Professor Monteverde answered: ''(i) The Roman 
Church here is in no respect the same as that Church 
in the United States; (2) the Church has given its 
people no true knowledge of rehgion; (3) it forbids 
the Bible to the people ; (4) its moral influence is not 
good; (5) the great mass of the leading people in 
Uruguay, in government, in society, in the intellectual 
life of the community, despise it; (6) it hates inquiry 
and intellectual progress. It would prefer clubs of 
infidels to Protestant Churches. I speak strongly but 
soberly, with a full knowledge of facts." 

We did not lightly accept these views but pressed 
all the sceptical questions of which we could think 
and sought to see the best in the great religious or- 
ganization which has covered South America. What 
is to be stated now is a careful and temperate presen- 
tation, far within the bounds of the evidence. A great 
deal that is said in criticism of the South American 
religious system is to be left out of account; e. g., 
its raffles and gambling devices at its church fairs, 
the fireworks at its religious festivals, on which it is 
said that $40,000 are spent annually in Arequipa 
alone, religious indifference among men and petty in- 
consistency in its priests and people. As to the for- 
mer, the South American Church covers and claims 
everything and such foolish and sometimes immoral 
amusements as attach themselves to other activities in 
other lands, in South America have no home save 
under cover of the Church; and as to the latter, our 
best religion is not sufficiently consistent to demand 
perfect consistency in any other. Also, what is to be 
said is said of the South American Church and of the 



PRESENT RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS I45 

society which it claims to control and has controlled 
for more than three centuries. It is not said here of 
the Roman Catholic Church in the United States. 
Whether what is said is true of the Roman Catholic 
Church in Spain and Italy it is for others to tell. 

In considering the existing religious conditions in 
South America we must recognize the liability of our 
Protestant mind to biased judgment. The South 
American Roman Catholic view of Protestant lands 
shows us how easy it is for men to mislead them- 
selves by their prejudices.^ Let us avoid the peril of 
sweeping generalizations regarding religion in South 
America by looking specifically at facts which are 
susceptible of proof. 

What are the conditions for which the Church 
must hear responsibility? i. The first test of relig- 
ious conditions is to be found in the facts of social 
life. No land can be conceded to have a satisfactory 
religion where the moral conditions are as they have 
been shown to be in South America. If it can be 
proved that the conditions of any European or North 
American land are as they are in South America, 
then it will be proved also that that land too needs a 
religious reformation. Christianity is not opinion or 
ritual. It is life and that life must utter itself in 
moral purity and strength. No amount of theological 
statement or devout worship can avail to take the 
place of ethical fruitage in social purity and victory 
over sin. The simple fact that immorality in any 
land abounds is all the evidence required to justify 
the presence in that land of any force that will war 
against immorality and strive to make men pure, 

^ See article on " Protestantism " in La Luz, a Roman Catholic peri- 
odical of Arequipa, Peru, May 20, 19 10. 



146 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

whether the land be the United States or South 
America or Hungary, of which a recent visitor writes 
of the student classes : " The moral standards are 
shocking. The saddest thing is that there seems to 
be so little sense of shame in such matters. Impurity- 
is looked upon as the natural thing. The low ethical 
conditions are not confined to Roman Catholics. A 
teacher in a Protestant college said to me, ' No one 
ever told me when I was a student that it was pos- 
sible to live a pure Hfe.' " 

It is not true to say that the present moral con- 
ditions in South America exist in spite of the Roman 
Catholic Church as immorality in the United States 
exists in spite of the Churches here. The South 
American Church has never waged any such war 
against impurity as has been waged in lands where 
Protestant Churches are found, or in Roman Catholic 
Ireland. It has, by its refusal to recognize the valid- 
ity of civil marriage and by its own extortionate 
marriage fees, directly fostered illegitimacy. Its 
priesthood, as will appear, has come out of the life 
it was supposed to raise and has accommodated itself 
to the moral standards surrounding it. No single 
agency in South America is popularly accused of a 
greater share in the responsibility for these conditions 
than the confessional. The exclusive control of the 
moral life of a continent cannot be given over to any 
institution which, having practical control of govern- 
ment for more than two centuries, and full authority 
over the conditions of marriage and education, shows 
as a result of its stewardship a percentage of illegit- 
imacy ranging from fifteen to seventy per cent. 

2. Religion in South America has not been as with 
us the motive of education and the fountain of our 



PRESENT RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS I47 

intellectual life. The Protestant missionary enter- 
prise with its stimulus to education and its appeal to 
the rational nature of man is required by the intellec- 
tual needs of South America. It is an uneducated 
continent. The educational systems are worthy of no 
small praise, but they want conscience, adaptation, 
morality; and especially is there need, as we have 
seen, of the solid education of the masses of the 
people. Recall the facts as to illiteracy which have 
already been noted. Agencies which will bring home 
to these nations the duty of educating all the people 
and of doing it with sincere thoroughness, of setting 
right standards, and of relating religion rightly to 
education, are justified in extending their help to 
South America. The Roman Catholic Church never 
did these things. Of its attitude throughout South 
America in the eighteenth century, the Hon. W. L. 
Scruggs, formerly American Minister to Colombia, 
says in " The Colombian and Venezuela Republics " : ^ 

It had prohibited the teaching of the arts and sciences, re- 
stricted education to the Latin grammar and the catechism, 
and limited the pubHc libraries to the writings of the Fathers 
and to works on civil and ecclesiastical jurisprudence. It 
had even prohibited the study of modern geography and 
astronomy, and forbade the reading of books of travel. It 
discouraged the study of the higher mathematics, and con- 
demned all philosophical inquiry and speculation as heresy. 
It had even placed under the ban such innocent fiction as 
"Gil Bias" and "Robinson Crusoe"; and there had never 
been a book, or a magazine, or a newspaper in the whole 
country that was not conformed to the strictest rule of the 
Roman Index.2 

Printing presses were refused even to cities and the 
influence of the Church was thrown against the 
1-128. 

^ Quoted by McCabe, " Decay of the Church of Rome," loo. 



148 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

spread of new ideas. There were notable exceptions 
among the priests, some of whom were among the 
leaders of political and intellectual progress, but the 
general situation is what Mr. Scruggs has set forth. 
And since the era of freedom began, the educational 
progress which has been made has been in spite of 
the Church and against its opposition. It has had its 
schools, but they were Church schools, teaching the 
principles of the Roman Catholic program in South 
America, and they were for only a section of the 
community. To the extent that the priests do now 
provide better schools, it is because of the influence 
wielded by the Protestant spirit. They still resist in 
any South American country the liberalization of gov- 
ernment and education. The Roman Church having 
had almost full control of the education of a continent 
for three centuries must be held responsible for such 
conditions of popular ignorance as exist in South 
America. Compare the record of the Roman Catho- 
lic Church in South America with that of the Roman 
Catholic and Protestant Churches in the United 
States. With the opportunity and resources of the 
South American Church, the Protestant Missions 
now at work in South America would give the Con- 
tinent more and better education in twenty years than 
it has received in the last three hundred. 

And the intellectual needs of South America are 
far deeper than this. The Roman Church has ful- 
filled no ministry to her intellectual life. She has 
been neither a teaching nor a preaching Church. We 
heard only one sermon in all the churches which we 
attended, and that was at a poor little Sunday School 
in an ornate church in Buenos Aires, where a young 
priest preached from the pulpit to some children on 



PRESENT RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS I49 

the difference between faith and sight. Only occa- 
sionally are sermons preached, and those not on the 
Gospel, nor the great problems of religious faith and 
moral realities, but on the lives of saints. We heard 
of only a few Sunday Schools and saw but one. South 
America is full of scepticism and atheism and free 
thinking. The men whom the census calls Catholics 
are often as much Taoists as they are Catholics, and 
they say, when asked, that they are not Catholics, but 
sceptics and made such by the Church. " I was born 
a Catholic,'' one man told us. " My father was very 
strict. At seven I knew Latin and took my place as 
a boy in the service of the Church, but at first I could 
not understand. Then I understood and saw that the 
whole thing was false and left it." Meanwhile, to 
meet a great intellectual problem, the problem of 
intellectual scepticism, the Church has been doing 
almost nothing, either in the way of apologetic propa- 
ganda or by the challenge of a character-transforming 
moral power. 

It is said by some in its behalf that it follows a 
subtler principle and holds and molds society by its 
ministry to the deeper nature through its institutions 
and its worship. To which it is to be replied, first, 
that it does not reach the men of South America in 
this way. They have little to do with its institu- 
tions or its worship. And, secondly, the appeal which 
the Church in South America makes to awe or sen- 
sibility is not a fine or worthy appeal. The art and 
aesthetic taste of the churches and the church worship 
are simply atrocious. The new churches and their 
decorations with rare exceptions are worse than the 
old. There are some splendid old buildings like the 
Church of San Francisco in La Paz, one of the most 



150 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

noble churches in South America, the solid dignity of 
whose unplastered walls and arches and domes not 
even the gilt trappings of its altars and the outleaping 
steed of St. James can spoil. And here and there is a 
good, reverent picture, but the use by the South Amer- 
ican churches of the symbols of religion which have 
such immense educational power is in the worst taste 
that could be imagined. The result is seen in the 
general want of real reverence. 

The Church is issuing no literature dealing with 
the fundamental problems of unbelief. It is organiz- 
ing no preaching missions to educated men. It is not 
facing the great issues rationally in the schools. 
Under the stimulus of external influences it has begun 
to awake in a few places, especially in Chile and 
Brazil, but over most of the continent the old condi- 
tions prevail. The Protestant churches are bearing 
the chief burden of the defense of supernatural relig- 
ion against rationalism and fanaticism and indiffer- 
ence. They are needed to meet a situation which the 
South American Church has not met and cannot meet 
because it has helped to create it. 

3. The South American religion is the one religion 
in the world which has no sacred book for the people. 
In China the great ambition of the whole nation for 
centuries has been to master the Classics. In Moslem 
lands the Koran is the most exalted of all books and 
the ideal of the educated man has been to be able to 
read it in Arabic in its miraculous purity. Hindus 
and Buddhists have had their sacred books open to 
all who would study them. But in South America we 
have had the phenomenon of a land in the complete 
control of a Church which has, as far as it could, 
sealed its sacred Scriptures to the people. There are 



PRESENT RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS I5I 

Roman Catholic translations of the Bible both in 
Spanish and in Portuguese, but the Church has dis- 
couraged or forbidden their use. Again and again 
priests have burned the Bibles sold by colporteurs or 
missionaries, even when they were the Roman Catho- 
lic versions. Again and again they have denounced 
the missionaries for circulating the Scriptures and 
have driven them out of villages where they were so 
employed, and have even secured their arrest. It is 
safe to say that not one Roman Catholic out of a 
thousand in South America would ever have seen a 
Bible but for the Protestant missionary movement. 
The priests themselves are ignorant of it. In only 
one church did we find a copy of it though there 
were service books by the dozen. And in that one 
church it had apparently been confiscated in the con- 
fessional. The Bible is not read in the Roman Catho- 
lic Churches and there are no Bible schools for its 
study. The Protestant missionary effort, however, 
has scattered millions of Bibles over South America 
and not only brought the book with its vivifying 
power to the people, but actually forced the South 
American Church to take up a different attitude. El 
Chileno, a clerical paper much read by the laboring 
class in Chile, and El Mercurio, the leading Chilean 
newspaper, now print portions of the Scriptures daily 
with Roman Catholic notes upon them. The Roman 
Catholic Church in Brazil has also modified its posi- 
tion to meet the situation created by the Protestant 
circulation of a book approved by the Church and yet 
forbidden by it. Mr. Tucker, the agent of the Ameri- 
can Bible Society in Brazil, wrote in 1908 : 

In the beginning of our work in Brazil we had to face 
constantly the fact that the Catholic Church positively pro- 



152 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

hibited the people from reading the Scriptures and threat- 
ened with excommunication any who dared to do so. Even 
the priests in former years had to ask for a special dispen- 
sation if they wished to read and study the Bible for a time. 
I have visited many priests who did not have a copy of the 
Bible, and the few that do exist are in Latin. 

We have before reported that the first Catholic Congress, 
which met a few years ago in the city of Bahia, discussed 
the question as to what should now be done, seeing that 
their prohibitions, excommunications, persecutions, and Bible- 
burnings, had not availed to put a stop to the Protestant 
circulation of the Scriptures, which is all the time increas- 
ing. The Franciscan monks were authorized to revise and 
print the Figueiredo translation of the four Gospels. . . . 
Later appeared a Harmony of the Gospels, the work of one 
of the most cultured priests in Brazil. . . . 

Early in the present year a priest of the Mission in the 
College of the Immaculate Conception at Rio de Janeiro 
completed his translation of the four Gospels from the Vul- 
gate. These he has printed and placed on sale, together with 
Sarmento's translation of Carriere's French paraphrase of 
the Acts of the Apostles. 

The Archbishop of Rio, who is now a Cardinal, 
the first in South America, writes a preface com- 
mending this work. But in spite of these facts, the 
circulation of the Bible is still discouraged or pro- 
hibited by the South American system and no effort 
is made in Brazil by the Roman Church to act upon 
the commendation of the Cardinal. The Council of 
Latin American Bishops in Rome in 1899 particularly 
condemned the Protestant vernacular version of the 
Bible, published by the Bible Societies. The Arch- 
bishop of Bogota in his circular issued in 1909, 
already quoted, declared that all who received or 
had in their possession " Bibles or books of whatever 
kind which are sold or distributed by Protestant mis- 
sionaries or their agents or by other book sellers are 



PRESENT RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 1 53 

absolutely obliged to deliver such books to their 
parish priest or to surrender them to the ecclesiastical 
tribunal of the Archbishopric." His people could not 
retain copies even of the Roman Catholic versions of 
the Scriptures which are often distributed by the 
missionaries. Only a few months ago, the priest in 
the church on the main plaza in Chilian in Chile, where 
the great markets are held, boasted openly in church 
of having burned seven Bibles. The circulation of the 
Bible in South America is still dependent upon the 
Bible Societies and the Protestant missionaries. If it 
were not for them, the people of South America would 
to-day be without the Bible. Is it wrong to give it to 
them? Must we justify a movement without which 
40,000,000 people would be ignorant of the Bible? 

4. One of the most pitiful facts in the religious 
situation in South America has been the character of 
the South American priesthood. Drawn either from 
the lower orders of the native population or from 
those elements of the priesthood in other lands which 
were least desired there, the clergy of South America 
have represented the low-water mark of the Roman 
Catholic priesthood. There have been exceptions. In 
Chile the priesthood has been recruited in no small 
measure from good families and it is in large part an 
able and efficient body, numbering many zealous and 
capable men. In recent years also, with a great in- 
rush of friars expelled from the Philippines and dis- 
placed men from Spain, Portugal and France, there 
have come also many shrewd, devout and earnest 
men, and throughout South America the European 
sisterhoods have rendered a loving and devoted serv- 
ice of the type known the world around. With 
these allowances, however, and recognizing the ef- 



154 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

fort which the Church is now making to regain the 
lost ground and to abate the gross abuses of the past, 
it still remains true that the moral character of the 
priesthood has not presented to South America the 
object lesson of purity. The friendly visitor fights as 
long as possible against accepting the opinion univer- 
sally held throughout South America regarding the 
priests. However convinced we may be that the en- 
forced celibacy of the clergy is a wrong and evil 
principle, we like to believe that the men who take 
such a vow are true to it and that while the Church 
loses by it irreparably and infinitely more than she 
gains, she does gain, nevertheless, a pure and devoted, 
even if a narrow and impoverished service. 

But the deadly evidence spread out all over South 
America, confronting one in every district to which 
he goes, evidence legally convincing, morally sicken- 
ing, proves to him that, whatever may be the case in 
other lands, in South America the stream of the 
Church is polluted at its fountains. We have spoken 
of the immorality of South America as justifying 
Protestant missions. The Roman Catholic Church in 
South America must be held in no small measure re- 
sponsible for the immorality. Not wholly. Those 
countries are tropical. The people are hot blooded. 
There is human nature with its untamed passion. In 
our temperate lands there is immorality for which we 
would not admit that our churches are to blame. 
When this has been said, however, there are two 
more things to be added. It is the business of the 
Church to protest unceasingly against immorality by 
her preaching. It is her business to protest against it 
by her life. All Churches in our land have done this. 
The South American system has not done it. It has 



PRESENT RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS I55 

waged no uncompromising and deathless warfare 
against sin. It has had no personal purity meetings 
for boys and young men. It has not cried aloud. It 
has held its voice and been dumb, before an immo- 
rality of which China would be ashamed. And it 
has been silent because it could not speak. *' I think 
that one-half of our priests have been true and kept 
themselves pure," said a young Spanish priest in 
Chile, a father in a French order, to the man who 
introduced us to him. He and another priest were 
the only men we met who took so favorable a view. 
Many said flatly that they did not believe that there 
was one pure priest. Such a statement is wildly 
false, but it is terrible when the men of a continent can 
say such things about their religious teachers. Some 
of those who knew most priests said sadly that they 
knew few who they were sure were really good 
men. A Jesuit priest told us in Colombia that out 
of eighteen priests whom he knew personally, only 
one was a pure man. We do not accept so dark 
a view. There are many good priests, but allowing 
for these and even assuming that the young Chilean 
priest's judgment is just, the common opinion through- 
out South America is, that the priesthood is morally 
corrupt, and the fact of its corruption is so patent 
that its influence, instead of being against immorality 
is itself evil. Specific details are miserable but they 
can be supplied with parish and name. Detailed 
proof could be gathered that would fill volumes but 
it must suffice to say that the vow of purity is a vio- 
lated vow with a great proportion of the priesthood 
and that thousands of the illegitimate children in 
South America have priests for their fathers. 

And it is not by the character of the priests alone 



156 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

that the South American system fosters immorality. 
It does it by the confessional which many men will 
not allow their daughters or, if they can help it, their 
wives to attend; in which, men say, impure thoughts 
are suggested to their children and improper questions 
asked of their wives, because priests have to ask them 
according to the regulations of the Church which 
were prepared by that Cardinal Liguori, himself a 
good man, who said, " The most virtuous priests are 
constrained to fall at least once a month." That is a 
dangerous acknowledgment under which to set up 
the confessional. In Colombia we met a priest greatly 
perplexed as to his own duty, who showed us a 
manuscript which he had written in Spanish, entitled, 
" The Word of Common Sense." It was the strong- 
est, most sweeping denunciation we have ever read 
of the Church. He described the moral condition of 
the priesthood as he knew it, set forth the political 
intrigues of the Church, and dealt with strong and 
unqualified condemnation with the confessional as a 
source of deep immorality and of family disruption. 
Whatever limitations, moreover, may surround the 
idea of confession and indulgence in the mind of the 
Church, the people understand that by the confes- 
sional they are clear of all past sin, which the Church 
has now taken over, and that if faithful to the Church 
they may do what they like and be sure of salvation. 
The Church makes it possible also for whoever 
wishes to dispose of young children. In many con- 
vents there are revolving barrels set in the walls or 
in some window and so arranged that a small door 
can be opened, the child placed in the barrel and the 
barrel revolved, ringing a bell which brings a sister 
to take the foundling while the bearer can escape 



PRESENT RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 157 

without identification. Why are such things made 
easy by the Church? 

Everyone speaks well of the sisters and nuns, who 
represent what is noblest and best in the Church ; but 
why do they too do things in the dark? And the 
priesthood is not only a bad influence morally, it is so 
mercenary that its greed is a scandal. In part its 
mercenary character is forced upon it. It is the 
method of support which has grown up. The Pas- 
sionist Fathers in Buenos Aires lamented that the 
necessity of raising the support of priests by charges 
for baptisms and marriages and masses had brought 
the priesthood into disrepute. Refined men would 
doubtless arrange the matter in unobjectionable ways, 
but the priests in the main come from the coarser 
classes of the people, they must often come from 
very low classes, for the worst faces one sees in 
South America, the most sensual and animal and 
gross, as well as some of the most wistful and attract- 
ive, are the faces of priests. Is the ministry of the 
Gospel to be left to this priesthood? Are the people 
of South America to receive the chaHce of life from 
their hands? Is there any Church in the world or 
any section of any Church which will deny the duty 
of Christianity to redeem this situation in South 
America? If it is thought that perhaps the situation 
as to the character of priests has been stated here too 
severely, a few testimonies from the innumerable wit- 
nesses who might be summoned will suffice: 

(i) Cox's " Life of Cardinal Vaughan." Vaughan, 
who was later the highest Roman Catholic ecclesiastic 
in England, visited South America in the sixties 
and wrote of what he saw in New Granada: "The 
monks are in the lowest state of degradation and the 



158 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

suppression of them would be an act of divine 
favor." " To Herbert Vaughan," says his biographer,^ 
" shocked at what he heard on all sides of the state 
of the clergy, the persecution which had now gone 
on for some time (the Government at this time had 
forbidden the priests to say mass or celebrate any of 
the sacraments) seemed less a scourge than a provi- 
dential chastisement. Among graver matters he notes : 
* Priests scandalize the people much by cock fighting. 
I have been several times told of priests taking their 
cocks into the sacristy, hurrying disrespectfully 
through their mass and going straight off from the 
altar to the cock pit. They are great gamblers.' " 
And there were " graver matters." 

(2) John R. Spears in the New York Sun: 

The common charge among foreigners that they (the 
priests) are licentious ought to be taken up first of all. Some 
facts were related to me showing that their notions of 
morality differ from the notions entertained by preachers in 
the United States. At David, in the Isthmus of Panama, 
the people told me their priest was to be deposed because he 
was attentive to too many women. . . . When I asked if it 
was merely a question of his taking liberties with "too 
many," the reply was in the affirmative. I saw for myself 
in various towns, beginning at Santiago de Veraguas, that 
the priests usually had housekeepers who were handsome 
women, and that there were children in the houses who called 
the housekeeper mother, although the woman was said to 
be neither a widow nor a wife. In Alajuela, Costa Rica, 
a photographer from California, who said he was a faith- 
ful member of the Church, came to me especially to ask 
that I would expose the condition of affairs there. The 
priest, he said, made no pretence of denying the paternity 
of his children. The Californian was plainly shocked by such 
a condition of affairs. 

At a little town where I remained over night on my way 

^ 125. 



PRESENT RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 159 

from Punta Arenas, Costa Rica, to San Jose, the landlady was 
very indignant because the village priest had performed a 
marriage ceremony for a man who wanted to wed a woman 
who had been married by civil process to another man from 
whom she had but recently parted. There had been no 
divorce. The priest said the civil marriage was not bind- 
ing. Not to multiply instances of this kind, it is likely that 
no one will deny that a majority of the priests of the Span- 
ish Main hold their pledge of sexual purity very lightly. I 
asked the Alajuela photographer if the conduct of the priest 
there had had the effect of leading the women to make mer- 
chandise of themselves, and he replied that it had not, but 
it had led to very many unions without either a civil or a 
religious marriage ceremony. And that, I am sure, is the 
effect throughout the Spanish Main. In fact, I believe that 
it has led the people very close to a mental condition where 
they regard the marriage service as a form only. 

(3) Frederick Palmer in " Central America,'' on 
conditions such as prevail there: 

Only satire would call Central America Christian to-day. 
Once it was Christian, but now its masses are lapsing into 
paganism, even as the Haitian negroes have lapsed into Afri- 
can voodooism. . . . 

In Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua the priesthood has 
fallen into the lowest state of any countries in Christendom 
not in the Caribbean region. The bayonet no longer con- 
siders it as a factor to be reckoned with. It has neither 
political power nor religious power of any account. ... In 
morals the people have the examples of their leaders. . . . 
Some of the mountain tribes have never been civilized, though 
they are within three days of New Orleans, and they are 
better off than the ones who were Christians and have lapsed 
into paganism.^ 

(4) Lea's " History of Sacerdotal Celibacy " : 

In spite of the Nicaean canon, on which the rule of celibacy 
has virtually rested, the Church, after a struggle of more 
than a thousand years, was forced to admit the " subintro- 
^269-272. 



l60 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

ducta mulier"' as an inmate of the priest's domicile. The 
order of Nature on this point refused so obstinately to be 
set aside that the Council of Trent finally recognized women 
as a necessary evil, and only sought to regulate the necessity 
by forbidding those in holy orders from keeping in their 
houses or maintaining any relations with concubines or 
women liable to suspicion. . . . 

The careful provisions as to the age and character of these 
" Marthas," and the prohibition of manifestations of undue 
familiarity with them — especially in public — are scrupulously 
enumerated in the latest assembly of Catholic prelates, the 
Plenary Council of Latin America held in Rome in 1899.^ 
These precautions are not uncalled for if there is truth in 
the statement that statistics submitted to the council showed 
that in Latin America, of 18,000 priests 3,000 were living in 
regular wedlock, 4,000 in concubinage with their so-called 
housekeepers, and some 1,500 in relations more or less open 
with women of doubtful reputation.2 

(5) Juan Bautista Castro, Archbishop of Caracas 
and Venezuela, in a pastoral letter published in full 
in a leading newspaper of Caracas, which introduces 
the letter with the remark : " We have always thought 
that priests, as men, have their weaknesses, paying 
thus their tribute to Mother Nature, and to-day the 
most illustrious Lord Archbishop has taken upon him- 
self to ratify our beliefs:" 

The clergy have fallen into profound contempt because of 
events which have placed them on the declivity which leads 
to all manner of failure. There are no calls for the clergy, 
and this contempt for them, so general, is one cause for this 
lack. Impotence, sterility, decadence, moral and spiritual — 
all these, accompanied by the strident and persecuting words 
of our adversaries — these form the true and striking picture 
presented to all who deign for a moment to contemplate 
it. . . . 

We have spoken much of the persecutions of which the 

lA. & D. Cone. PI. Am. Lat. 281. 
^Macmillan, 1907, Vol. II, 341. 



PRESENT RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS l6l 

work of Jesus Qirist has been the victim in our land — but 
we speak very little or not at all of our sins, and, more par- 
ticularly, of the sins of the clergy. . . . 

Scandal in the parish or town takes on unmeasured propor- 
tions : the dishonored priest is lost once for all, the enemies 
of the Church triumph because of the shameful fall, and 
good souls retire to groan in secret and to cry to the Lord 
to free them from this abomination. . . . And even if the 
sin is hidden, yet is it revealed through every guise in the 
dead parish, the deserted church, in the tiresome preaching, 
unfruitful works of mere routine, without fervor or piety, 
in the house of the priest, who breathes only a worldly at- 
mosphere, in his reading, in his occupations and the tedium 
at the things of God. Why do we note the sudden spiritual 
decline of a priest who until yesterday was active and de- 
vout? Why do we see him destroying little by little that 
which promised to be a fruitful apostolate, but now ap- 
proaches mysterious and mournful ruin ? Ah ! if we could 
penetrate the veil of his secret life, we should know that the 
one cause of this humiliating and opprobrious decay is in 
nothing other than the hidden corruption of his heart and 
life. . . . And yet there are priests who only rarely go to 
confession, and others who never confess at all ! There are 
those who select easy-going confessors who pass over every- 
thing and then give absolution ; and there are not wanting 
others whose confession is nothing more than a sad routine 
practised between one sin and another, to their own decep- 
tion — well known is the life they lead, and where it will 
end. . . . 

Nearly all the clergy of the archdiocese of Caracas is pa- 
rochial; there are more than one hundred parishes, and 
to-day all are occupied by pastors, with few exceptions — 
those which have become mere hamlets. And yet, why does 
ignorance of rehgion continue to brutalize and degrade more 
and more these people? Why exist so many parishes which 
are true cemeteries of souls dead to God, in despite of the 
fact that there stands the church edifice, there is Jesus Christ 
in the Sacrament Adorable, there is the priest with his mar- 
velous powers to sanctify the souls? . . . The only reason 
is that the parish priest does not faithfully perform his 
duties, he does not lay hold upon and generously shoulder 



I62 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

the charge he has accepted, and, as many Christians who 
take of the Gospel only so much as suits them, so he takes 
up only those duties which do not trouble him much — more 
than all, those that produce most income. They do not 
preach, or, if so, it is only to tire and annoy the few hearers. 
What living word could come from a sacerdotal soul dead 
to the palpitations of the grace and the activity of pastoral 
zeal? There is no catechism class — and if there is, it is 
in this sense : that this work is for the priest a disagreeable 
task, for which he has neither intelligence nor heart, and 
which he ends by handing it over to the school or to the 
women ! Service, attention and care and frequent visiting 
of the sick, in order to lead them as by the hand to the gates 
of eternity, is an unknown thing to him. Poor sick ones 
that fall into the hands of such priests! And this, when 
they do not abandon the sufferers entirely under any mere 
pretext to escape going to their aid in their extremity su- 
preme. . . . And we will not say more, for we should be 
interminable, if we were to enumerate everything. . . . 

We have now completed a grave duty; we have said what 
was necessary in view of the spiritual disasters which here 
and there too often appear in our clergy; we feel the relief 
of one who has lightened his shoulders of a heavy load ; this 
load was the necessity of pointing out the sins which under- 
mine our Church and weaken the power of the priesthood. 
Easily may our words meet with hardness and blindness, 
which form the most formidable judgment that God exer- 
cises, even in this world, against the priest who goes astray; 
we have thought this over well, and our prayer before the 
Lord has been intense and prolonged that He would pene- 
trate this darkness with His light, and that where sin has 
long aboundied, grace may much more abound to salvation.^ 

(6) El Mercurio, the leading newspaper in Chile, 
and a clerical organ, in an article entitled " Peruvian 
or Chilean Clergy," after praising the character and 
influence of the Chilean clergy, proceeds to assert 
that " not in one case but in many, the Peruvian 
priests have committed crimes of public scandal and 

*£/ Constitucional, December 7, 1908. 



PRESENT RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 163 

have given the inhabitants of that province (Tacna) 
disgraceful scenes ! " It calls them " notoriously im- 
moral," declares that " the scandals of the Peruvian 
priests have been proven and documented " and asks, 
" Should we prefer the clergy of bad conduct which 
that same bishop (of Arequipa) has kept in Tacna 
and which is the only cause of the deep moral de- 
cadence of the people in that province — that clergy 
which keeps the inhabitants of the interior in a semi- 
savage state, who entirely neglect their ministerial 
work?"^ There is a political bias here, but what- 
ever competence Roman Catholics allow to El Mer- 
curio's judgment of priests must attach to its judg- 
ment on Peruvians as well as on Chileans 

(7) S. R. Gammon in " The Evangelical Invasion 
of Brazil :" 

When those who should be the moral guides and examples 
of the people are men of depraved lives, men of unblushing 
immorality, this example of moral turpitude must react pow- 
erfully on the lives of the people themselves. Much has 
been said and written of the corruption of the Romish priests 
in South American countries, and the phrase " as immoral 
as a Brazilian priest " may be found in European literature, 
as though these were more proverbially depraved. They 
probably do not merit this distinction as compared with the 
priests of other Latin American countries, but surely the 
state of things among them is bad enough. Concubinage, 
open and unblushing, is common among them; and refined 
sensibilities are shocked at the bare suggestion of the half 
of the sad story of moral depravity. Celibacy and the con- 
fessional have dragged the priesthood into depths of iniquity 
that are inconceivable, and along with themselves they drag 
down to their level thousands of victims. The following 
passage from Sefior Barbosa's pen, is most delicately put, 
but it suggests plainly what it would require volumes to nar- 
rate in full detail : " The most formidable theater for the 

^ Issue of March 6, 1910. 



l64 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

mission of a Jesuit is the family. The wife and the child 
easily fall into the hands of the priest, and, as happens in 
all Roman Catholic countries, the domestic priesthood of 
the father is entirely lost. How many heart-breaking sor- 
rows are hidden from curious eyes under the domestic roof, 
calamities that embitter the noblest affections, destroy all 
lawful rights, and incapacitate so many souls. How many 
of these calamities, endured in silence and carefully hidden 
from the public gaze, have left in our lives deep and painful 
furrows. . . . Confidence, which is the necessary privilege 
of the husband, the essential bond of union between two 
souls, is shared with the confessor, or rather, is entirely 
usurped by him." . . . 

Many of the superiors do not want the evils remedied, 
because they are part and parcel of the corruption; many 
others, who would correct abuses, cannot do so, because the 
application of discipline would leave their dioceses without 
parish priests to administer the sacraments and attend to 
the necessary ecclesiastical functions. To such an extent has 
the evil grown, that probably not one priest in ten would 
be left, were discipline applied to all who habitually offend 
against the most fundamental rules of moral purity.^' 

(8) Charles M. Pepper, special agent of the 
United States Government, of conditions in Cuba, 
which were the same as in the rest of Latin America : 

In Cuba, as in Spain, the Church was against civil re- 
forms and freedom of worship. It is the general testimony 
that the Church fees for marriage, baptism, and burials were 
mercilessly exacted. The people paid tribute from the cradle 
to the grave. The Spanish priesthood in Cuba as a class 
personified ignorance, cupidity, and indifference to their holy 
office. This is a harsh judgment. It has been pronounced 
in calmness and sorrow by Catholic observers.2 

1 82-84. 

2 Quoted by Grose, " Advance in the Antilles," 100. 



NOTE TO CHAPTER V 

Alleged correspondence between the Vatican and the 
Archbishop of Santiago de Chile. 

In a Chilean newspaper, La Lei, which at first was 
regarded as one of the ablest and best radical news- 
papers in Chile, but which subsequently deteriorated 
and finally died, there appeared on October 24, 1897, 
a long letter purporting to be " addressed by order of 
his holiness Pope Leo XIII to the prelates of Chile." 
It contained a terrible arraignment of the Archbishop 
and the Chilean clergy generally. On December 5, 
1897, the same paper published what purported to 
be the Archbishop's reply, issued under his seal. 
Extracts from these letters were given a wide pub- 
licity in magazines in Germany, England and the 
United States, and a paragraph from the alleged let- 
ter of the Pope was printed in Young's book, " From 
Cape Horn to Panama" (1900),^ and subsequently in 
Beach's " Geography and Atlas of Protestant Mis- 
sions " (1901),^ "Protestant Missions in South Amer- 
ica" (1900),^ Clark's "A Continent of Opportunity" 
(1907),* and Neely's "South America, its Mission- 
ary Problems" (1909).^ This paragraph and the 
letter from which it was taken, though published far 
and wide, seem never to have been called in question 
until they were quoted in an address on South Amer- 
ica by the author of this book at the Student Volunteer 

* 9if. ' 126. ^ 205. 

*333- 5136-137. 

165 



I66 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

Movement Convention in Rochester in 1909-10. The 
letter was then declared to be fraudulent. El Mer- 
curio, the leading present day newspaper in Chile, re- 
produced it and pronounced it a fraud.^ The Secre- 
tary of the Archbishop of Chile certified that such a 
communication had never been received.^ And the 
Protestant missionaries in Chile came to the conclu- 
sion that the letter had been a fabrication of La Lei, 
and one of them suggested that the name of the paper 
might justly have been changed to La Lie. 

Dr. Webster E. Browning, of Santiago, at my re- 
quest, made a thorough investigation and at last dis- 
covered the author. Under date of December 16, 
191 1, Dr. Browning writes: 

For a year or more I have been working on the matter, 
but have not been able to bring it to a conclusion until to-day. 
I first went to a member of Congress whom I have known 
for a number of years and told him of the letters published 
in the Lei, and of the trouble caused by their quotation in 
the United States. He heard me through and then, with a 
laugh, said : " Those letters were not authentic." I replied 
that the Secretary of the Archbishop and others had told 
me the same thing, but that I would be glad if he could put 
me in the way of proving, beyond a doubt, that his state- 
ment was true. After some hesitation he gave me the name 
of another gentleman, also a member of the Radical party, 
who, he said, was the author of the letters. I called at once 
on this gentleman and stated the case to him, and, without 
a word, he arose, went to his safe, unlocked it, and brought 
out a book of clippings of his articles contributed to the 
Press since 1878. He at once turned to the two articles, — 
the pseudo letter of the Pope and the reply of the Arch- 
bishop and stated that he had written them both, at the 
suggestion of one of the leaders of the Radical party. He 
said that he had no idea that they would ever be quoted 

"^Literary Digest, July 2, 1910, 19. 
* America, June 18, 1910, 252. 



NOTE TO CHAPTER V 167 

outside of Chile, and I told him how they had been pub- 
lished, or quoted, in both London and New York. This he 
seemed to take as a compliment to his ability in forging the 
documents and laughed at the whole matter as a huge joke. 

I asked him if there had ever been any basis for such let- 
ters, — if any such correspondence had ever passed between 
the Vatican and the clergy of Chile, and he said that abso- 
lutely nothing, so far as he knew, had ever been written. 

The whole matter, then, it seems, is boiled down to this 
fact : the gentleman in question, who has asked me to re- 
serve his name, wrote the letters " as a diversion," to quote 
his own words, not expecting that they would be quoted 
outside of his own country. He has written these and other 
such letters under a nom de plume, and only a very few 
know of his authorship, — one of these men being, as I sus- 
pected, the first man on whom I called this morning. Al- 
though all the other members of his family are Conserva- 
tives, as he told me, he is a Radical and attacks the Church, — 
or did, in his younger days, — in this way, under an as- 
sumed name. He is a lawyer, well-to-do I should say, and 
had no hesitancy whatever in assuming the responsibility of 
the authorship of the letters. He said that for a while he 
was known among his cronies of that time as " Rampolla," 
in honor of his skill in writing the letters. He also stated 
that these letters were the cause of the Archbishop's excom- 
municating La Lei, a fact that tremendously increased the 
circulation of the paper and gave it ten years of life where- 
as, otherwise, it would probably have died much sooner. At 
his request I keep his name secret, but you are authorized 
to use my letter and statements as you think best. 

The author of the letters claims that the statements are all 
true, even to-day. 

It is both strange and lamentable that such a publi- 
cation should have gone so long unchallenged and 
have been allowed so general a circulation. There is 
need of a far-reaching purging of the priesthood of 
the Roman Church in South America, as has already 
appeared and is acknowledged by candid Roman 
Catholics, and the fact that these documents were fab- 



l68 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

ricated does not affect one way or the other the truth 
about conditions in South America; but these condi- 
tions will not be improved by untruths, and everyone 
will gladly dismiss from his mind this alleged bit of 
evidence and regret its circulation. It has, however, 
these lessons. It shows the possibility of South 
American newspaper invention to be not inferior to 
the worst in North America. It shows the bitterness 
of the radical opposition to the Roman Church, and 
the criticisms which are rife against the Church. And 
it shows also that even this radicalism credited Leo 
XIII with the will to rectify the abuses which it 
charged to the Chilean priesthood and with a purpose 
to purify the life of the Church in South America. 



CHAPTER VI 

PRESENT RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 
(Continued) 

But there are other conditions than those already- 
considered for which the Roman Church assumes re- 
sponsibiHty by virtue of its claim of South America 
as a Roman Catholic continent. 

5. The great mass of the South American people 
have not been given Christianity. They do not know 
what Christ taught or what the New Testament repre- 
sents the Gospel to be. There are surely some who find 
peace and comfort and some who see Christ through 
all that hides Him and misrepresents Him, but the 
testimony of the most temperate and open-minded of 
the men and women who were once themselves ear- 
nest Roman Catholics is that there are few whom 
they know in the Roman Catholic Church who know 
the facts of Christ's life and fewer still who know 
Christ. The very crucifixes of which South America 
is full misrepresent the Gospel. They show a dead 
man, not a living Saviour. South American Chris- 
tianity knows nothing of the resurrection and of that 
which signifies life. We did not see in all the 
churches we visited a single picture, symbol or sugges- 
tion of the resurrection or the ascension. There were 
hundreds of paintings of saints and of the Holy Fam- 
ily and of Mary, but not one of the supreme event in 

169 



170 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

Christianity. And even the representations of the 
death of Christ are false. Some of the figures are too 
terrible for description, and their whole significance is 
untrue to the Gospel. And even the dead Christ is 
the subordinate figure. The central place is Mary's. 
Often she is shown holding a small lacerated dead 
figure in her lap, and often she is the only person rep- 
resented at all. In the great La Merced church in 
Lima, over the chancel is the motto : " Gloria a 
Maria." In the oldest church in Barranquilla, there 
is no figure of Christ at all in the altar equipment, but 
Mary without the infant in the centre, two other fig- 
ures on either side, and over all "Gloria a Maria." In 
the wall of the ancient Jesuit Church in Cuzco known 
as the Church of the Campania, are cut the words, 
" Come unto Mary all ye who are burdened and 
weary with your sins and she will give you rest." 
Over the figure of Mary in the wretched central 
church in Curityba, where Mary stands above four 
inferior figures of Mary, Joseph, John the Baptist, 
and Jesus, is the inscription, " Intercede pro nobis." 
This supremacy of Mary is not in church art alone. 
It is the practical religion of the land. When, on Good 
Friday morning, 1909, the two processions bearing the 
images of Mary and Jesus moved out of the Church 
of San Nicola in Barranquilla and in the opposite di- 
rections about the plaza, the multitude followed the 
figure of Mary and the figure of the Saviour was de- 
serted. Mary is the central religious person. She, as 
Bishop Romero declared in the Argentine Congress on 
December 31, 1901, "for all Catholics is the centre of 
piety and virtue in the family circle." Mary, not 
Christ. And Mariolatry is the religion of the land 
because the Church has taught it as true Christianity. 



PRESENT RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 17I 

We might quote from the " Catechism of Christian 
Doctrine by Canon Jose Ramon Saavedra, approved 
by the University of Chile as a text-book for teaching 
in the schools and ordered to be so used by the Su- 
preme Government. Ninth Edition. Santiago, 1881." 
But it will suffice to say that the popular religion of 
South America accepts the view of Mary which is set 
forth in St. Alphonsus Liguori's " The Glories of 
Mary/* in which we read : 

And if Jesus is the King of the universe, Mary is also its 
Queen, and as Queen she possesses, by right, the whole king- 
dom of her Son. Hence as many creatures as there are who 
serve God, so many they are who serve Mary: for as angels 
and men, and all things that are in heaven and on earth, are 
subject to the empire of God, so are they also under the 
dominion of Mary! 

The obedience of Mary offset the evil wrought by the 
disobedience of Eve, and thus the human race, accursed 
through the first woman, was saved through the Virgin and 
won back from the powers of darkness and death to be given 
to grace and life. . . . 

Our Redemption is her mission, for she has been divinely 
appointed to intercede for us at the throne of grace. . . . 

Thou, my Mother, hast enamored a God with thy beauty, 
and drawn him from heaven into thy chaste womb ; and shall 
I live without loving thee? . . . 

If Mary undertakes our defence, we are certain of gain- 
ing the kingdom of heaven. This do, and thou shalt live. . . . 

O compassionate Mother, most sacred Virgin, behold me 
at thy feet! If thou protectest me, what can I fear? I only 
fear lest, in my temptations and by my own fault, I may 
cease to recommend myself to thee and thus be lost. But I 
now promise thee that I will always have recourse to thee. 
O, help me to fulfil my promise. Lose not the opportunity 
which now presents itself of gratifying thy ardent desire to 
succor such poor wretches as myself. In thee, O Mother of 
God, I have unbounded confidence. From thee I hope for 
grace to bewail my sins as I ought, and from thee I hope 
for strength never again to fall into them. If I am sick. 



172 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

thou, O celestial physician, canst heal me. If my sins have 
weakened me, thy help will strengthen me. O Mary, I hope 
all from thee; for thou art all-powerful with God. Amen.^ 

It is not necessary to detail the multitude of pagan 
superstitions with which the religion of South Amer- 
ica is encumbered. It is enough to point out that the 
Church in South America does not preach Christ cru- 
cified and risen again. It preaches Mary, whom it 
proclaims from the lips of thousands of unfaithful 
priests to be of immaculate conception and of perpet- 
ual virginity. The doctrines of the immaculate con- 
ception and the perpetual virginity should be preached 
by a virgin priesthood. Untrue in themselves, they 
are doubly false and can minister only to falsehood 
when preached by false men. And these men the peo- 
ple of Latin America are taught to consider as " gods 
on earth." This is the statement given us by a mis- 
sionary, from the catechism of D. Santiago Jose Gar- 
cia Mazo, approved by the Church and widely read in 
Latin America : " The Son of God is reincarnated in 
the hands of the priest as though they were another 
womb of the Virgin. The priest by virtue of the 
words of consecration makes Christ to exist upon the 
altar and he becomes as the father of the Lord and 
the husband of His most holy Mother. As Christians 
with veneration and respect ought we to acknowledge 
them entrusted of God : these visible gods who repre- 
sent to us the invisible, these gods on earth who at 
times make the God of heaven." Doubtless some men 
really believe this doctrine, but it is by such untruth 
and misrepresentation as well as by deliberate decep- 
tion that the South American Church has not only not 
taught Christianity but has directly fostered deception 

1 Edition, New York, 1902, 10; 28-29; 38; 53; S4-SS. 



PRESENT RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 1 73 

and untruth of character. " My complaint against the 
Church," said one of the oldest missionaries, who 
maintains cordial relations with some of its institutions 
and its representatives, " is not a matter of any par- 
ticular doctrine or doctrines, but of the general influ- 
ence of the Church in breaking down conscience and 
the sense of individual responsibility to God. The 
Church steps in at every stage of a man's Hfe and does 
all a man's dealing with God. The result is that there 
is left no personal moral initiative or duty. And then 
I complain also because it has made no protest against 
immorality. With pulpits all over South America it 
has raised no voice against vice and sin." " You ask 
about this nation and the Roman Catholic Church," 
said the American Minister in one South American 
capital. " Well, the nation is rotten, thanks to the 
Church and to Spain. The Church has taught lies and 
uncleanness and been the bulwark of injustice and 
wrong for three hundred years. How could you ex- 
pect anything else ? " " Yes," added an English mer- 
chant who had lived for years in the country, '' and the 
people are sick of it, and ready to break away. I know 
the strong men of the country, and they despise it, 
and will sometime sweep it out of the land, but it still 
holds the women." What there is to be said for the 
view that South America is sick of her religious system 
we shall consider presently. It is enough to point out 
now that the system is deliberately deceitful. *' Lies," 
said a priest to a friend who told the remark to us, 
" what do lies have to do with religion? " Therefore 
in the catechism which has been quoted and also in 
Jose Deharb^'s Catechism prepared for use in the 
Spanish-American countries and published with the 
approval of many Archbishops and bishops in Chile, 



174 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

Argentine, Mexico and Spain, the Church deliberately 
deceives with reference to the Ten Commandments, 
entirely omitting the second and dividing the tenth in 
order to make the requisite number. Can a Church 
which deceives the people teach them true religion? 
Is the preaching of Mary the preaching of Christ? 
Are falsehood and Mariolatry an adequate reason 
for withholding truth and Christ from South Am- 
erica ? 

6. Religion is still in South America entangled with 
politics. That the Church which for centuries had 
full and exclusive control of religion and education 
and was also the greatest political power, should find 
difficulty in adjusting itself to the new order of reli- 
gious toleration, involving in some lands practical dis- 
establishment and in every land a great curtailment of 
its authority, was perfectly natural. That the South 
American nations which were as Roman in religion as 
they were Spanish in government should find it harder 
to give up the former than the latter characteristic was 
also perfectly natural. That nations where the entire 
population had been nominally Roman Catholic should 
retain that religion as the recognized and State religion 
— this, too, was perfectly natural. And we must make 
all allowance for these things, but none the less perilous 
and injurious both to religion and to political liberty is 
the doctrine which, as we have already seen, dominates 
the attitude of the Roman Church toward religious 
liberty and free political institutions. It is desired to 
confine this statement strictly to the situation in South 
America, but it is necessary to quote some princi- 
ples declared elsewhere, because they have been stead- 
ily proclaimed as the Church's doctrine in South 
America : 



PRESENT RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 1 75 

To depose kings and emperors is as much a right as to 
excommunicate individuals and to lay kingdoms under an 
interdict. These are no derived or delegated rights but are 
of the essence of that Royal authority of Christ with which 
His Viceregents on earth are vested.^ 

The Catholic Dictionary, 1893, under the imprimatur of 
Cardinal Vaughan, cites the celebrated Unum Sanctum 
(1303)- "The temporal authority must be subject to the 
spiritual power." 

•The principle (of liberty of conscience) is one which is 
not and never has been and never will be approved by the 
Church of Christ.2 

It would have been a kind of ingratitude and treachery, to 
Jesus Christ Himself — we may almost say it would have ex- 
hibited the implicit spirit of apostasy — had the hideousness 
of Sectarianism been permitted (in the Dark Ages) to sully 
the fair form of Catholic unity, had heresy been permitted 
to poison the pure air of Catholic truth. ... So far is any 
apology from being needed for the then existent intolerance 
of heretics that, on the contrary, an apology would be now 
needed for the Medieval Church — and would indeed not be 
very easily forthcoming — had she tolerated the neglect of 
intolerance. . . . And we need hardly add — though we will 
not dwell on this — ^that the same principle which applied to 
Medieval Europe, applies in its measure to any contemporary 
country, such as Spain, in which Catholicity has still entire 
possession of the national mind.^ 

If to-morrow the Spanish Government, as advised by the 
Catholic Church, were to see that a greater evil would ensue 
from granting religious liberty than from refusing it, then 
it would have a perfect right to refuse it. Of course, the 
Protestant Press would teem with charges of intolerance and 
we should reply, Toleration to Protestants is intoleration to 
Catholics.* 

* Cardinal Manning, " Essays on Religion as Literature," second 
series, 417. 

2E. J. O. Reilly, S. J., "The Relation of the Church to Society," 
iii, 273. ^Dublin Review, January, 1877, 39. 

* W. C. Robinson, who was made a Monsignor by Leo XIII, " Lib- 
erty of Conscience," 22. 



176 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

The Church in South America has acted on these 
principles. Some of the great leaders in the emanci- 
pation of the South American republics were priests, 
but the Church in South America has resisted every 
advance proposed by the spirit of political freedom. 
The conservative party is everywhere the clerical 
party. Everywhere the clerical party has obstructed 
education and industrial progress. It has fought civil 
marriage, religious toleration and the freedom of the 
press. It has prompted the revolutions against the 
party of constitutional liberty and human equality. In 
Peru it is charged that it has instigated every such 
revolt against the order and advancement of the na- 
tion. It wrecked Colombia when that country was en- 
joying unprecedented prosperity and owned a good 
dollar. Its dollar is not now worth one cent. This 
most clerically dominated land in South America is 
one of the most backward in education, has a worth- 
less currency, and with the richest resources suffers 
the direst poverty. Where the states have broken 
away from the domination of the Church and adopted 
equal laws, the Church still resists and shows its dis- 
loyalty. In Parana in 1909 a public mob in Florian- 
opolis went to the Bishop to protest against the con- 
duct of a priest who would not allow the services in 
memory of the late President Penfia, of Brazil, who 
had died on June 14, 1909, to be held in his church 
at Florianopolis because the national flag was dis- 
played. This he held was the symbol of a secular and 
illegitimate agency, not to be recognized by the Church 
because of its enactment of a civil marriage law and 
its freedom from Rome. In Rio likewise a priest 
would not allow a soldier's body to be brought into 
the church because the national flag was over the cof- 



PRESENT RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 1 77 

fin. The Bishop of Parana in the Argentine is said 
to have repudiated in a similar way the flag of the 
Argentine Republic. 

The idea of tolerance or of equal recognition is a 
difficult idea to the South American Church. The 
speech of Bishop Romero in the Argentine National 
Congress in January, 1902, opposing a subsidy voted 
by Congress to the Rev. William C. Morris for the 
" Argentine Evangelical Schools," the remarkable 
work developed by Mr. Morris for the education of 
thousands of neglected children in Buenos Aires, illus- 
trates this difficulty. The bishop rested his opposition 
to the grant on the flat declaration : 

" Mr. President, I believe that according to our pres- 
ent constitution, it is not possible to favor the devel- 
opment of Protestant worship in the Argentine Re- 
public. . . . And I say, Mr. President, that in loyalty to 
the constitution it is not possible to support and spread 
the Protestant worship, for it is an indisputable prin- 
ciple that when the fundamental law of a country 
commands that a certain institution be sustained, it 
implicitly establishes the prohibition to sustain or sup- 
port the institutions of an opposite character ; and be- 
tween the Catholic and the Protestant religions there 
exists a diametrical opposition. The duty of the State 
being therefore to sustain the Catholic worship, it may 
not support in any way whatever an institution con- 
trary to that worship." 

We call the United States a Protestant land. In 
an even stronger sense the South American colonies 
were Roman Catholic lands. We can understand the 
slow progress among them of ideas of religious tol- 
eration, and the tenacity of the traditional Roman 
Catholic confusion of Church and State. But the con- 



178 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

fusion has been injurious to both, and its perpetuation 
is a constant menace to South American liberties. 

No one is able to speak more authoritatively upon 
the attitude of the South American religious system 
to political liberty than Ruy Barbosa, the leading 
South American representative at the last Hague Con- 
ference and one of the most conspicuous candidates 
for the presidency of Brazil after Penila's death. In 
a long introduction to a book entitled " Janus " he 
wrote of what he knew in Brazil: 

Romanism is not a religion, but a political organization, 
and that, too, the most vicious, the most unscrupulous, and 
the most destructive of all political systems. ... If Jesuit- 
ism is a perpetual conspiracy against the peace that has for 
its basis liberty and parliamentary institutions, it is only be- 
cause the infallible pope hates all modern constitutions, as 
being in their very nature incompatible with the temporal 
power of the clergy. . . . [The Jesuit order is] the wisest work 
of darkness which the perversion of Christian morality could 
desire. ... If the Bishop is systematically rebellious against 
constitutional authority, if he is a despot with his own sub- 
jects in the religious domain, and at the same time insubor- 
dinate to the civil law, it is because he is really the subject 
of the Romish hierarchy and because Rome's rule of action 
has ever been her purpose to enslave the individual con- 
science of the clergy and control the temporal power of the 
Church. If the monks are the propagators of fanaticism, 
the debasers of Christian morals, it is because the history of 
papal influence for many centuries has been nothing more 
nor less than the story of the dissemination of a new pagan- 
ism as full of superstition and of all unrighteousness as the 
mythology of the ancients — a new paganism organized at 
the expense of evangelical traditions, shamelessly falsified 
and travestied by the Romanists. . . . The Romish Church 
in all ages has been a power religious scarcely in name, but 
always inherently, essentially and untiringly a political power. 

These are Ruy Barbosa's words. We could not 
write them and we quote them solely with reference 



PRESENT RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 1 79 

to South America. The South American Church em- 
bodies this attitude. In so far as this attitude misrep- 
resents Christianity and antagonizes the movement of 
the spirit of freedom in South America we dare not 
deliver South America over to it. 

7. The Strength and Weakness of the Roman 
Church in South America. The Roman Church is both 
very strong and very weak in South America. The 
priesthood has a powerful hold upon the superstition 
of the people. As we rode along one day in Brazil in 
a drizzling rain with bare heads and rubber ponchos, an 
old woman came running solicitously from her hovel, 
mistaking us for priests and crying, " O most power- 
ful God, where is your hat ? " To the people the 
priest stands in the place of God, and even where his 
own life is vile the people distinguish between his 
function as priest, in which he stands as God before 
the altar, and his life as man, in which he falls into 
the frailties of the flesh. Not only is the priesthood 
the most influential body in South America, but the 
Church has a hold upon politics and family life and 
society which is paralyzing. In Quito, Ecuador, alone, 
for example, " there are six monasteries, seven con- 
vents, ten seminaries, seven parochial churches, fif- 
teen conventual churches, a cathedral, a basilica, and 
thirteen chapels, covering nearly one-fourth of the 
area of the city. The Franciscan monastery, which 
covers several acres, is said to be the largest in the 
world." ^ And all this is in a city of about 50,000 pop- 
ulation, A few years ago, before the upheaval in 
Ecuador, it was said tha't there was a Roman Catholic 
church for every 150 inhabitants; "that ten per cent 
of the entire population was either priests, monks, or 

*" Ecuador, 1909," 15. 



I80 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

nuns, and that about seventy-five per cent of the 
population of Ecuador was absolutely illiterate." ^ 
The evil of the Church is not weak and harmless but 
pervasive and deadly, and the Christian Church is 
called by the most mandatory sanctions to deal with 
the situation. 

But on the other hand, the Roman Catholic Church 
does not have a fraction of the strength and power in 
South America which it is supposed to have, and the 
inefficiency of its work is pitiful. With enormous re- 
sources, with all the lines of power in its hands, it has 
steadily lost ground. Here and there there have been 
galvanic revivals worked by the ecclesiastics who have 
poured in from Europe and of whom some are capable 
and some devout men, but the Church is decrepit, 
without spiritual leadership, destitute of missionary 
zeal, with no ingenuity of method, and weak and sick. 
How sad the conditions are and how earnestly the best 
men deplore the situation we learned from a statement 
of some priests whom we met in Buenos Aires. I 
went to see them with Mr. Dougherty of the American 
Lutheran Church, who had been sent from Philadel- 
phia to look after the Lutheran Scandinavians in 
Buenos Aires and who had been doing so, but whose 
heart had been stirred by the need of religious work 
in Spanish among the religiously destitute people of 
the Argentine and who could not in conscience leave 
Buenos Aires with its ten Protestant churches and go 
back to Philadelphia with its six hundred and ninety. 
Mr. Dougherty had sought for some priests who were 
truly and intelligently interested in the spiritual wel- 
fare of the people and had found a small company of 

1 Lee, "Religious Liberty in South America," i8o, quoting Curtis, 
" Between the Andes and the Ocean," 6i, 87. 



PRESENT RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS l8l 

them. This was the substance of what one of them 

said: 

The need in this countrj' is very great and our Church is 
very weak. There are only eight bishops where there ought 
to be twelve or fifteen. We are held up by our connection 
with the State, which has the right of appointment of the 
bishops, and the President has not appointed the others whom 
we so sadly need. I regard this connection with the State 
as a great evil. We have no such liberty, no such respect 
here for the Church and its priesthood, no such power and 
influence as a Church as you have in the United States, 
where the Churches are all free from connection with the 
State. The Argentinos are a wide-awake progressive people, 
and in the provinces they are not irreligious, but here in the 
city, which has one-fifth of the population of the country, 
they are utterly irreligious. The foreign element has drifted 
away from the Church. It never knew a free connection 
with a free Church, and when it found that here the priests 
had no such power over them as in Europe, it abandoned the 
Church entirely. In our parish here of 120,000, only eight 
per cent go to church. Then the forces of the Church are 
inadequate. In the whole of the Argentine there are only 
between 500 and 1,000 priests, counting the secular priests, 
too, and this in a population of 5,000,000. In the city of Ro- 
sario there are seventeen priests to 140,000 people. Here in 
Buenos Aires there is a parish of 130,000 with but one priest 
and two assistants. In the United States such a parish would 
be almost enough for a bishopric. About three out of ten 
of the priests are native Argentinos. I do not think that 
they are to be blamed for the bad condition of the Church. 
There have been, I think, only three scandals since I came 
in 1893. But the great mass of the people have no religion, 
or if they do they do not practice it. The great need is for 
preaching the Gospel, but alas, most of the priests have never 
done any preaching and do not know how. The ItaHan and 
Spanish priests especially just go from church to church 
saying masses. We call them changadors (i.e., porters). 
And it is terrible to see the way the priests are despised and 
reviled and hated here. We cannot go out from house to 
house or even take a religious census in the homes of our 
parish. The people insult and scorn us so» You cannot 



1 82 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

imagine how different it is from the United States, where 
religion is respected and the priests are honored. Here it 
is bad luck to see a priest, and if even high-class ladies pass 
one they run to touch iron to break the bad luck. Our body- 
has asked the Pope to let us wear ordinary clothes and to 
put aside our priests' dress so that we can reach the people. 
The people here do not support the Church as they do in 
the United States. They do not attend mass. When they 
do they are disorderly and you would never know it was 
church, and even at times of death they will not send for 
the priest or will do so only at the last unconscious moments. 
Another great need besides preaching is for schools, but the 
Church has none, only a few poor Sunday Schools. We 
have no money for them. In the United States the priests 
have plenty of support for their work, from pew rents, 
weekly offerings, special feast-day offerings and wedding 
fees, usually $20.00, baptisms from $5.00 to $20.00 and funer- 
als. The weekly offerings are usually enough to support 
the priest and he has plenty for schools. But here we have 
none of these things except the fee for funerals and masses, 
and usually only two dollars or so for masses. The people 
will go unmarried rather than pay the priest, though they 
will pay great sums on funeral displays. The need of ask- 
ing for money for funerals and marriages puts our priests 
here in a bad light and makes them the more unpopular. The 
neglect of church marriages gets things into a bad condition 
and often we organize missions just to go about and 
straighten out marriage relations and perform the ceremony 
free. The truth is that the great mass of the people have 
no religion and that the conditions are truly pitiful. Should 
there be Protestant churches here? Why not? The churches 
are all in the United States together and get along very well. 
I do not see why they should not be here also. 

" I think," added another priest who had come in, 
" that things have improved some during the fifteen 
years since I came. More young men come now than 
did then. The people are shrewd and thrifty and not 
generous. There is no common stock but the type is 
something more than a composite. It has no respect 



PRESENT RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 1 83 

for the authority of the Church. We need our own 
schools. We can go into the public schools and teach 
religion, but only out of school hours and the children 
will not stay for it." These men were good and ear- 
nest men. Whoever thinks that there are not good 
men among the priests should meet such men. One's 
heart goes out to them in their hard and despised mis- 
sion, inherited from the priesthood which has been 
the curse of South America and to which some people 
tell us we should leave it. As we rose to go they in- 
vited us to go into their church with them. It was a 
simple and attractive Gothic church which they said 
had been designed by a Protestant architect. On the 
altar in the chancel was a simple little cross, not a cru- 
cifix, though a crucifix stood off at one side. Over 
the cross was a good painting of the Agony in Geth- 
semane. The two Fathers took us into the church and 
about the church and bade us good-bye at the door. 
They are trying to do by evangelistic work, by con- 
stant preaching and by true lives what it were well if 
the true men in the Roman Catholic Church and in all 
Churches would do without more delay for South 
America. Their view of the situation, while confined 
to Argentina is increasingly true of all South America. 
The Church is weak and ineffective. The church 
buildings are often ill kept and in ill repair. Some 
of them are kept so purposely as a leverage for rais- 
ing funds, but the very device is itself a confession of 
weakness. The population is inadequately looked 
after. In the cities there are convents full of priests 
and sisters, but in the country there are large sections 
wholly uncared for. In many towns there is small 
provision and even in large cities there are districts 
left to one church and its priest for which it is impos- 



1 84 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

sible for him to care. In 1904 Bishop Kinsolving of 
the American Protestant Episcopal Mission in Brazil, 
stated that a Roman priest had told him that there 
were hardly more than a dozen churches in the state 
of Rio Grande do Sul where at that time mass was 
said on the Lord's Day.^ In 1895, there were only 
1,019 churches in the entire Argentine Republic. 

Even the attendance upon the churches we found 
to be far less than we had anticipated. There were 
few crowded churches. We saw only two which had 
more than four hundred people in them. We went to 
the cathedral service in great Rom.an Catholic cities 
like La Paz and Arequipa, and though there were bish- 
ops or high ecclesiastics and elaborate processions, 
there were small handfuls of worshippers. Arequipa 
was said to be one of the most fanatical cities in Peru, 
where the Church still held the loyalty of the men. 
We attended five churches there on the great feast of 
the Virgin Mary's birthday. There were not 150 men 
at any of the services, at most of them there were not 
fifty, and not more than 300 or 400 women. It was 
a week day and all the shops were as much closed as 
they would be on Sunday, but the people were not in 
the churches. In Holy Week there are great demon- 
strations and on special occasions some churches will 
be thronged and sometimes with men, and there are 
cities where the churches are largely attended, but I 
do not believe the Roman Catholics of South America 
attend church with anything like the fidelity of Prot- 
estants or Roman Catholics in the United States. 
There was not one city or town where we spent a 
Sunday where the total attendance at church would 
have equalled, I do not believe it would have amounted 

^Tlte Sun, New York, April 12, 1904. 



PRESENT RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 1 85 

to one-half, perhaps not to one-quarter, the church 
attendance that same day in any American community 
of the same size. 

Mr. Isaacson writes of Brazil in " Rome in Many 
Lands " : ^ " Of the one-fifth (?) who are educated 
only the * smallest proportion adhere to any form 
of religion whatever. Statesmen, lawyers, phy- 
sicians, army and navy officials have almost to a man 
rejected the historic Christ, and have turned to infi- 
delity and Positivism. In one city with a population 
of 35,000 after careful investigation less than 200 
could be found in full communion with the Roman 
Church." He quotes the Catholic Bishop of Sao 
Paulo, saying in an official paper : " Brazil has no 
longer any faith. ReHgion is almost extinct here." ^ 
Father Sherman, a son of Gen. W. T. Sherman, made 
the same report about Porto Rico. He went to that 
island as a Roman Catholic chaplain with the 
American arm^y and wrote to a Roman Catholic jour- 
nal : " Porto Rico is a Catholic country without re- 
ligion. The clergy do not seem to have any hold of 
the native people." ^ To General Brooke, he reported : 
" Now that the priests are deprived of government 
aid many are leaving the country. The Church has 
been so united with the State and so identified with it, 
in the eyes of the people, that it must share the odium 
with which Spanish rule is commonly regarded. The 
sacrament of confirmation has not been administered 
for many years in a great part of the island. Religion 
is dead on the island." * Father Sherman would have 

1 160, 

2 McCabe, " The Decay of the Church of Rome," footnote, icgf. 

3 The Messenger of the Sacred Heart, December, 1898, Art. "A Month 
in Porto Rico," quoted in The Converted Catholic, January, 1899. 

* Grose, "Advance in the Antilles," 196. 



1 86 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

to make the same report on most of the South Ameri- 
can countries. 

Even if the South American system were Christian, 
it is preposterous to speak of it as occupying the field 
or meeting the rehgious needs of the country. 

Within recent years, as has been already Suggested, 
the Roman Church has been giving the keenest atten- 
tion to South America. Father Currier in a recent 
article speaks of this Roman Catholic revival and of 
the awful need for it : 

As to religion, there is a new Brazil as much as in poli- 
tics and in material prosperity. The Catholicity of the 
colonial period has left its monuments in the old churches, 
nearly all in the style of the Renaissance of the period. But 
religion in Brazil had declined, and the abomination of deso- 
lation was prevailing in the holy place. I could not begin 
to tell you of the utter deterioration of religion which once 
existed. All this I learned since leaving Bahia. Then came 
the change, one of the most wonderful changes recorded in 
ecclesiastical history, and all within a period of twenty years. 
The empire fell — it was a Providence of God — and the State 
ceased to meddle with the Chnrch, Breathing the atmos- 
phere of freedom, the Church expanded, and to-day she finds 
herself in a most flourishing condition. The impulse is due 
to that great statesman, that noble Pontiff, that Leo XIII, 
whose eagle eye never ceased to scan the horizon. He sent 
Cardinal Gotti to Brazil; the reformation began in earnest. 
The old religious orders were nearly extinct; their ranks 
were recruited from Europe. The old Benedictine abbeys 
arose from their tomb, while the Carmelites and Franciscans, 
equally recruited from abroad, were born anew. . . . Priests 
are the great need of Brazil, for vocations, especially among 
the better classes, are scarce and seminaries are few. For 
instance, there is one seminary for the whole province of 
Sao Paulo, with a small number of students. Should mat- 
ters continue to advance and no untoward events occur, the 
Brazilian Church has now an era of prosperity ahead of her.^ 

* The American Catholic Quarterly Review, July, 1910, 477! 




Areouipa. Peru : ]\Iouxt Misti in the Distance 



1 


1 


'^*'^y^^K^' 


' it 11 


-^ :\ ^■'^S ' i|i| 


iuii 




I 




r 1' 



Avenue of Palm Trees in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 



PRESENT RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 1 87 

According to the Vatican correspondent of the New 
York Sun, Leo XIII began in 1884 to plan for this 
" rehabilitation of the South American Churches " 
whose decadence was recognized. But this tide of 
interest on the part of the European Roman Catholic 
Church in South America is sweeping in much that is 
evil. Along with honest men, the refuse driven out 
of other lands is also pouring into South America. 
The South Americans are beginning to resent the in- 
vasion which has threatened their liberal institutions. 
The new forces have greatly strengthened the Church, 
but they have done nothing as yet to revive 
real religion and little to enlist the interest of the peo- 
ple in the old forms which have lost whatever mean- 
ing they may have once possessed to the great masses 
of the South American population. 

Two competent testimonies from within. In sum- 
marizing the present religious conditions in South 
America, I cannot do better than cite two witnesses. 
One was for six years a Roman Catholic priest in 
South America, and the other is Father Charles W. 
Currier, Ph.D., of Washington. 

The former writes that every statement made in 
this and the preceding chapter with regard to present 
conditions is true and adds these notes: 

I lived six years in South America, and being directly en- 
gaged in religious work, was alive to the moral problems, 
and my experience bears out all you say, and more than that. 

As to illiterates in Brazil, 85 per cent is very conservative; 
I should have put it higher. 

As to illegitimacy, 68.8 per cent is, I think, untrue. The 
true percentage, if it could be had, would put the figure much 
above this. There are whole towns along the Parana where 
there is not nor has there ever been marriage. 

I had to copy out a report of a long missionary journey 



1 88 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

in the north of Argentina, and the baptismal register read, 
over against almost every name — I should say against 95 
per cent of the names — *' hijo natural" or "hija natural." 

I can also corroborate your testimony as to the place of 
" marriages " in the little missionary work that is done in 
the Argentine. The Bishop of La Plata and his coadjutor, 
both exemplary and zealous men, make long journeys and 
work hard, but men of this stamp are far too few. On all 
their missionary journeys they take with them a certain man 
— ^priest — who has a gift for inducing people who are living 
together to get married. 

I have seen sixty couples married after a mission in Holy 
Cross Church, Buenos Aires, and in some cases the children 
attended the marriage of their parents. 

The " cherida " or " amada " is a regular institution and 
almost universal among such men as can support one, and 
the custom is imitated by the older sons. 

As to Church and State, the relation established by law 
does not favor the Church in all cases. I have heard many 
priests say that they wished that the day might come and 
come quickly when there would be a separation; the priests 
who say this are, however, not natives, nor Latins. 

Cardinal Satolli, when in this country, drew a comparison 
between the relations of Church and State in North and in 
South America. He said, using and playing upon a well- 
known scholastic distinction : " The State in America recog- 
nizes the * personality ' but not the ' existence ' of the Church, 
and in South America it recognizes the * existence ' but not 
the 'personality.'" 

I was in Rio when the St. Francis Hospital was formally 
opened with a semi-pagan pageant in the church on the hill 
above it — the old Franciscan Church. I saw a little thing 
that day which was eloquent of the attitude of laity to clergy 
in Brazil. The public was invited to inspect the new build- 
ing, and when we went down the long steps and came to 
the door of the hospital through which the people were 
thronging, I saw the robed guardian of the door rudely shove 
a priest out and forbid him entrance. 

I have seen irreverence in churches everywhere, but I never 
saw anything to equal the irreverence of men in Brazil. The 
striking case that I have in mind was of a man who seemed 



PRESENT RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 1 89 

to have come to church ^ith no other purpose than to mock 
the priest. 

In Argentina, while the Federal Government supports the 
Apostolic Roman Catholic Church, and the President and 
Vice-President must belong to that church, it is also the 
case that the government does not support the priests but 
only the Bishops, and the President and Vice-President, when 
I was there, were ipso facto excommunicated men because 
they were Masons. 

The Catholic forces in Brazil, Argentina and all down the 
East coast are in despair. They are absolutely without hope. 
They look upon the Church's tenure of power as a matter of 
time, and that a short time. I have heard many a discussion 
behind closed doors upon the situation, and all that was said 
bore this note of despair. The Catholic Church has not only 
lost its grip there, but even the Catholic Church knows it. 
I am speaking even of the native priests. 

I do not think that the Church in any case reaches more 
than ten per cent of the people, and in many places this is 
saying too much. I do not believe that of the 1,000,000 peo- 
ple in Buenos Aires there are 200 men on any given Sunday 
at service. 

There may be places in South America where it is true, 
but I do not think that it can be said that the priesthood is 
the most influential body in South America, and I know that 
its hold on politics is precarious and only for a time. Its 
hold on family life is not present but inherited. The sub- 
stance of religion is gone and only superstition is left. The 
priest is hated. 

The Church has a hold, but the grip is the grip of a dead 
hand, only the people do not as yet realize that the hand is 
dead. But there is no life in the grip, and it only needs a 
vigorous effort on the part of the missionaries, massed in 
numbers at some stragetic point, to loosen the grip. I can- 
not say too often that the Church there is dead, and none 
know it better than the priests themselves. 



Father Currier visited South America as a delegate 
to the International Congress of Americanists and has 
written a most interesting account of the various lands 



190 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

he visited in a book entitled " Lands of the Southern 
Cross." These are some of his comments on the pres- 
ent conditions of Church and priesthood. We will 
quote him fairly: 

The Brazilian people, as a body, are surely attached to the 
old Church, at least in form, but there is no doubt that there, 
as elsewhere, a spirit of rationalism prevails among certain 
classes.! 

In the days of the empire, the Church, united to the State, 
had fallen into a condition of decrepitude, and the morals 
of the clergy, secular and regular, were greatly relaxed; but 
in the last twenty years a wonderful reformation has taken 
place.2 

Yet I have reason to believe that the practice of religion 
in Brazil leaves much to be desired.^ 

There can be no doubt that, before the separation of Church 
and State, the influence of the government was, on the whole, 
unfavorable to the Church, greatly hampering its freedom 
of action. This will, to some extent, explain the relaxation 
of morals, while it is quite sure that the general reform 
began under the impetus given by Rome.* 

The Jesuit Fathers (in Montevideo) have charge of the 
Seminary, but here, as in many other countries of South 
America, there are few vocations to the priesthood. This 
scarcity of native ecclesiasts has rendered it necessary to 
accept the services of those from abroad, and hence it is that so 
many foreign priests, French, German, Italian and Spanish, are 
scattered throughout South America. . . . Most of the mem- 
bers of these religious orders are foreigners, and they are 
always on the qui vive, not knowing at what hour an edict 
of banishment may be passed against them. In the mean- 
time, they are working hard in the ministry. As a rule, the 
clergy of Uruguay is very good, though, to some extent, 
characterized by that inactivity and slowness found in so 
many Latin countries. . . . 

The Catholic Church is still recognized officially, but only 
the bishops and the seminary obtain a subvention from the 
government. In spite of the union of Church and State, 

144. *52. *62. *62, 63. 



PRESENT RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS I9I 

there seems to be an undercurrent of hostility to the Church 
which may break out at any moment. The public schools 
are neutral, and the teaching of religion is excluded, while 
the State university is said to be atheistic in its tendencies. 
Religion has no place even in the foundling asylum. Al- 
though there are Catholic organs like El Bien, and promi- 
nent Catholic laymen, like Dr. Sorrilla San Martin, most 
newspapers are hostile to the Church. It is no wonder that, 
with the elimination of religious principles, morality should 
be discounted. While influences for good are crushed to 
earth, French literature and the French theater are permit- 
ted to corrupt the morals of the people, and they say that 
licensed prostitution is widespread.^ 

As Church and State are united in Argentina, the Senate 
nominates the candidates to the episcopacy, and the names 
are forwarded to Rome. It sometimes occurs that the candi- 
date is rejected. The system is surely not the best that can 
be desired, as it naturally renders bishops, more or less, sub- 
servient to the State and timid, especially when they are sub- 
sidized by the government. This is one of those evils in- 
separable from a union of Church and State which, in the 
past, has caused no end of trouble to the Church.2 

The clergy of Argentina, as a body, bear a very good repu- 
tation for conduct, though the general complaint one hears 
in South America is that many of the foreign secular eccle- 
siastics, led to America more by self-interest than by zeal, 
have proved themselves worthless. For this reason, the bish- 
ops have become more cautious in admitting strangers. 

In Argentina, as throughout all of South America, eccle- 
siastics always wear the cassock. I am, however, aware of 
the fact that, in Buenos Aires at least, there is a decided 
wish on the part of some of the clergy to discard it as a 
street costume; but they are, naturally, opposed by the older 
conservative element. There is no doubt that, in a city like 
Buenos Aires, seething with elements hostile to the Church, 
the ecclesiastical garb is somewhat of a hindrance. Though 
it may protect the respectability of a priest, it also hampers 
his freedom of action, and must necessarily dampen his zeal. 
In the United States, priests clad in secular garb go any- 
where and everywhere. They penetrate, unhampered, into 

^66, 67. 2x43, 144. 



192 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

every nook and corner of their parish, they learn to know 
their people. I am afraid that this personal work of the 
ministry that brings the priest in touch with the people is a 
great desideratum in South America, for the most useful 
part of a priest's life does not lie in the routine work be- 
tween four walls, but in seeking out the lost sheep of Israel. 
It is clear that in a large, modern city, like Buenos Aires, 
where the cassock is exposed to constant ridicule, and where 
a very large proportion of the foreign element hates the 
very sight of it, a priest becomes timid, and must, of neces- 
sity, lack that fearless temper which would lead him to brave 
every obstacle, and go into the enemy's camp, if it is 
necessary.!' 

In spite of all the churches in Buenos Aires, and of the 
labors of the priests in Argentina, and in South America 
generally, there is much irreligion. A considerable number 
are actually hostile to the Church, while a very large pro- 
portion, though professedly Catholic, are indifferent, as far 
as the practice of religion is concerned. The infidel litera- 
ture of the eighteenth century, secret organizations, bad ex- 
ample, and many other causes have produced this result. 

We must, however, give credit to the Argentine clergy for 
not compromising with the irreligious spirit, even when it 
manifests itself in high quarters. As an instance, I may cite 
the " Revista Eclesiastico del Arzobispado de Buenos Aires,'* 
an official and very clever review, published under the aus- 
pices of the archbishop. In one of its numbers, among its 
ecclesiastical notes, it cites the " Pueblo," to show the anti- 
Catholic spirit of a high public official, who, when a com- 
mittee of ladies called upon him, to petition for the estab- 
lishment of a bishopric in Rosario, told them that he would 
in every way oppose the measure, because Rosario progressed 
better without a bishop and " the plague of clericalism." 2 

(In Chile) the secular clergy, a highly esteemed body of 
men, is recruited from the best families, whereby a distin- 
guishing mark is attached to the Chilean Church. The old 
Friars, at one time so active in Spanish America, while they 
retain their wealth, have apparently lost much of their pres- 
tige. Though they are edifying by their conduct, they do 
not seem to have kept pace with the times, and the fact 

1 144, 145. 2 154, 155. 



PRESENT RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS I93 

that they have recruited their ranks too easily, with perhaps 
too little discrimination and preparation, has made them de- 
scend somewhat from the commanding intellectual position 
they once occupied. That the old orders in Chile are very 
wealthy can easily be understood, when we reflect that they 
have been in the country since the conquest, and, as their 
property has remained corporate and undivided in the vari- 
ous orders, it has naturally increased in value during the 
centuries. 

It is evident that the distribution of ecclesiastics in the 
Church is very unequal, complaints meeting us from all sides 
of the scarcity of priests, while, in some countries, we 
find monasteries filled with members of their respective 
orders.i 

The parish priests of Lima are well spoken of, though com- 
plaints are heard against some of the ecclesiastics from 
Europe. The districts away from the cities, where priests 
are very isolated, still leave much to be desired, and, from 
what I could learn, there is still room for a general reforma- 
tion throughout the country. As contact with the rest of 
the world increases, railroads become more numerous, and 
closer relations between the centers of population are estab- 
lished, an amelioration is bound to come. The fact that there 
has been such a marked improvement of late, gives hope 
for better things in the future. Unfortunately, for the 
Church in Peru, there are few vocations to the priesthood, 
and the native clergy is dying out. The Church will have 
to depend largely on importations from abroad.^ 

If you listen to some of the priests, they tell you that re- 
ligion is in a very bad condition, that the men do not fre- 
quent the sacraments, that the influence of St. Mark's Uni- 
versity is evil, and that a Catholic university is absolutely 
needed. On the other hand, if you go to some of the churches 
on Sunday morning, you will see them crowded, and visit- 
ing the prominent churches, like Santo Domingo, San Fran- 
cisco, and that of the Jesuits, you will observe a goodly 
number at mass on week days. Women are, of course, in 
the vast majority, yet I have, time and again, seen a large 
number of men on week-day mornings in the church of the 
Jesuits. To judge from appearances, religion is not on the 

1228, 229. 2283. 



194 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

decline, and the churches are very much frequented, while 
there is, surely, much piety among the women. ^ 

As I look over my notes, jotted down at random, during 
my Lima days, I read these words : " How different from 
the Lima of my dreams ! " Yes ; Lima was a disappointment ; 
everything — churches, convents, dwellings, from the cathe- 
dral down, seemed to be in need of repairs ; for the hand of 
decay was over all.2 

The foreign priests are bringing in a new energy, 
but the " hand of decay " is over all. If one need of 
South America is education, it is clear that a second 
great need is religion. There is a glamour over the 
decay which at first allures one, but this soon passes 
and the whole system is seen in its weakness and ruin. 
It is a relic, not a prophecy. It is the echo of reced- 
ing footsteps. The false political ideals, identified with 
which it came to South America, have long since passed 
away. But there came in the Church noble motives 
and a true life and it lived on after Pizarro and Alma- 
gro and Valdivia and the adventurers, after Gasca 
and de Souza and the governors, after San Martin 
and Bolivar and Mirando and the liberators. But now 
the dissolution of its tyranny is at hand. The true 
was tainted with the false and shadowed with an ever 
darkening shadow, a shadow which in all charity but 
in the relentless truth we must call a moral night. That 
is the light that is now shining from the Roman Catho- 
lic Church over South America. If religion has noth- 
ing to do with morality, then it is all well. We can 
leave South America alone. But if as we believe re- 
ligion is nothing but a living morality, the morality 
of a true and loving fellowship with a Heavenly 
Father, a righteousness alive in Christ, if true religion 

1283, 284. 2275. 



PRESENT RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS I95 

and undefiled is this, that a man should visit the 
fatherless and the widows in their affliction and keep 
himself unspotted — then we are no Christians if we 
do not, whether American Protestant or American 
Catholic, carry such a religion to South America. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE INDIANS 

We have already considered the condition of the 
Indians prior to the European conquest, the effect of 
the conquest upon the Indian people and the work 
done for them by the Roman Catholic missionaries. 
The Indians in the Jesuit Missions were probably hap- 
pier and better off than the pure blooded Indians have 
ever been since. From the wrongs which they suf- 
fered at the hands of the conquerors, as we have seen, 
the Jesuits steadily sought to protect them. In Brazil 
they fought against the enslavement of the Indian 
when the early regulation permitted the colonists to 
keep in slavery such Indians " as might be seized on 
a just war, such as might be sold by their own parents 
and such as might sell themselves." ^ But the protec- 
tion of the Jesuits covered but a small number of 
Indians out of the millions in South America. The 
general conditions were evil. The regulations just 
quoted opened the door to almost any desired enslave- 
ment of the natives in Brazil. What happened on the 
West Coast we have also seen. Slavery simply wiped 
out the people by the million. This is the darker side. 

But some doubt the reliability of the figures of deci- 
mation and there is also another side. The Latin oc- 
cupation of South America did not exterminate the 

* Vianna, " Memoirs of the State of Bahia," 6i4f. 
196 



\ 



THE INDIANS ^'197 

Indian. On the other hand it has preserved him as 
he was not preserved in North America. The South 
American population of to-day contains perhaps twenty- 
times as many pure blooded Indians as are left in the 
United States and Canada, while Indian blood is the 
chief strain in the great majority of the people on the 
western side of the Continent. As a correspondent 
of the London Times wrote : 

The Latin white has not so despised the Indian as to dis- 
dain the idea of a union of members of the two races; to 
the Anglo-Saxon the idea of any such union is repugnant; 
and so the North American Indians have been compelled to 
remain creatures apart, inferior beings, outcasts. Forced to 
marry among those of their own race only, their diminished 
numbers have naturally led to a great deal of inbreeding 
amongst the peoples of the various tribes, and the inevitable 
result is that they are dying out. In South America the 
case is very different; the white and the Indian have mixed 
with a fair amount of freedom, and the result has been not 
altogether harmful to either people. In fact, where the inter- 
mixture has been most common, a decidedly fine, sturdy, 
valorous race has been evolved — a race destined perhaps to 
do great things.^ 

It is interesting to note the degree to which the In- 
dian blood in the South American peoples has been 
affected by the European strain. In some lands like 
Peru and Bolivia there are great masses of the mixed 
blood population which are dominantly Indian, while 
in Chile and Colombia where the Indian strain is very 
heavy, the mixed blood population, while retaining 
many Indian qualities, is more strongly Spanish in its 
present character. 

But it is not of the people of mixed blood that we 
are thinking in this chapter, but of the true Indians. 

*The Times, London, South American Supplement, August 30, 1910. 



198 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

Argentina. The Argentine Republic has the largest 
proportion of European blood in its people and Uru- 
guay ranks probably next in this regard. The Indian 
population of these sections of South America seems 
to have been very scanty and what there was has 
been either exterminated or absorbed. In Uruguay 
there are no pure Indians now ai;id in Argentina not 
many, except those who come in from Bolivia and the 
Paraguayan Chaco on the north to work in the sugar 
factories. According to the " Statesman's ^ Year 
Book " there are in the Argentine 30,000 Indians and 
in Paraguay, 50,000. 

Paraguay. The largest body of Indians in the 
southern part of the continent is in this western por- 
tion of Paraguay, called the Chaco. Among the In- 
dians in Paraguay the South American Missionary 
Society has a long established work at several points 
with about fifteen missionaries, and a new mission 
has been recently organized primarily to carry on 
" pioneer effort to evangelize the Indians in Northern 
Paraguay and Matto Grosso," one of the most interior 
states of Brazil. Its last annual report states that it 
has work in Paraguay at Conception, Horqueta and 
Santa Teresa in the department of Caaguazu. A 
speaker at the Ecumenical Missionary Conference in 
New York in 1900 gave an account of these Chaco 
Indians. " The Chaco," he said, '' is a region rather 
larger than the whole of France, and it is populated, 
as far as I can tell, by nearly a quarter of a million 
of heathen Indians. These Indians have maintained 
a virtual independence of the neighboring republics 
ever since the first Spanish conquerors landed in that 
country; and there are no civilized residents among 



THE INDIANS 199 

them except the mission party." ^ The volume on 
Paraguay by Dr. Jose Segundo Decoud, of that coun- 
try, pubHshed by the Bureau of the American Repub- 
lics, states that the total Indian population of Para- 
guay is about 100,000. The speaker at the Ecumenical 
Conference went on to speak of the ideas of these 
Indians. 

The people live in constant dread of devils. They are 
afraid to go at night to the swamps, because they say these 
sw^amps are the homes of devils. They live in constant 
dread of their lives, on account of the witch doctors. Witch 
doctors might send cats or rats, or snakes, or beetles into 
the body, and only by the help of a friendly witch doctor 
can one get rid of them. Then they believe in dreams. The 
Indian believes that when he is dreaming, his spirit really 
leaves his body and wanders far away; and while his soul 
is away, another wandering soul may enter in and take posses- 
sion, and then his own soul cannot get back. Another serious 
thing is that they hold you responsible for what they dream. 
If they dream of being killed by a certain man, they hold 
that man responsible, and think they are justified in killing 
him in return. They also bury people alive and practice in- 
fanticide. It is not done out of cruelty, but simply from a 
religious motive. But these savages are capable of im- 
proving. 2 

Another worker among these Indians writes of a visit 
to those living in the vicinity of San Estaneslao : 

Led by a native guide, we found the Indians hidden away 
behind the shelter of almost impassable swamps, across 
which we could not take our horses, amid the most savage 
conditions, and in great poverty. Some of them had a little 
maize, but for the most part they appeared to live on wild 
fruits, roots, reptiles, caterpillars, or anything procurable by 
hunting or fishing. For clothing they wore only loin-cloths 

1 Report of Ecumenical Missionary Conference, New York, 1900, 
Vol. I, 481. 

2 Ibid. 



200 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

and bands of women's hair twisted round the legs below the 
knees and round the wrists. Their faces were painted in 
curious patterns with some black pigment, and in some cases 
were also mutilated by a hole in the lower lip, through which 
a long appendage of resinous gum protruded, hanging down 
in front of the chin. They were armed with long, powerful 
bows, from which they can discharge, with deadly effect, long 
barbed arrows pointed with hard wood. Some of these 
arrows measure over six feet in length, and they speak with 
forcible if silent eloquence for the muscular build of the 
people who use them, especially when we consider that the 
men are only of average height. Another of their weapons 
is the stone axe. This they are said to make by inserting a 
piece of stone into the live limb of a growing tree and after- 
wards severing the limb with sharp flints and scraping it into 
shape for a handle when the wood has grown firmly round 
the stone. My visit was, however, too brief for me to see 
for myself that they do make their axes in the manner de- 
scribed. We saw also among them curiously made drums 
which seem to take the place of the gourd rattle used by 
some of the other tribes to drive off evil spirits. Water-pots 
were also in evidence, most ingeniously constructed with 
beeswax built on a basket-work frame of fine cane. Also 
rude clay pottery made, without any potter's wheel, by roll- 
ing the clay between the hands into long lines and building 
the pot up coil upon coil, kneading the coils into each other 
as the work proceeds, and smoothing and fashioning the 
pot with wet fingers till the desired shape is produced, then 
burning it till it is hard. They had twine also, beautifully 
made by themselves from fine cotton-like fiber, by a process 
of simply twisting it with their fingers and rolling the strands 
together on the leg. Some of the women were busily weav- 
ing their little loin-cloths on rude square frames made with 
four branches of a tree firmly fixed in the ground. Indeed, 
in spite of their miserable condition, they showed many evi- 
dences of intelligence and capacity.^ 

Patagonia. The conditions just described are typi- 
cal among the uncivilized Indians. It wsis into condi- 

^ South American Indians, March, 1909, Saf. — Annual Report of 
the Inland-South-America Missionary Union. 



THE INDIANS 20I 

tions very similar to these that Titus Coan came on 
his brief missionary venture among the Indians of 
Patagonia.^ For a fascinating account of the Pata- 
gonian Indians the student should read the tenth chap- 
ter of Darwin's " Naturalist's Voyage in the Beagle." 
It was among these Indians and those to the south of 
them that one of the most heroic of all missionary en- 
terprises met its tragic end, the mission, namely, of 
Captain Allen Gardiner. Those who remember Gar- 
diner and his heroic death in Tierra del Fuego will 
wonder whether there are none left of the poor people 
among whom he came to work. Very few, and these 
few among the lowest people in the world, naked or 
clad only with one loose skin rug, living in little reed 
huts which afford no shelter, feeding upon mussels or 
fish for which the naked women dive into the sea, and 
possessing no ambition for improvement. The total 
population of the province of Magellanes, which in- 
cludes all Chilean Tierra del Fuego, is 17,330. More 
than two-thirds of this population is in the town of 
Punta Arenas. The rural population of the province is 
only 5,131, and this includes the large farming popula- 
tion, caring for the millions of sheep scattered over 
these storm beaten hills, where in 1878 there were but 
185 sheep in the whole province. There cannot be more 
than a few hundreds or at the most a thousand, of 
Indians in the province and very few more on the 
Argentine side of Tierra del Fuego. The only work 
among them is the work of the South American Mis- 
sionary Society at River Douglas, Novaria Island, not 
far from Spaniard Harbor, where Allen Gardiner fell. 
Chile. The Araucanian Indians of Chile were the 
stiifest necked Indians in South America. The Span- 

1 Coan, "Adventures in Patagonia," 51. 



202 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

iards never subdued them and the Chilean Government 
had its own troubles with them. They are now re- 
duced to the little company in the south central section 
of Chile. The census of 1907 gave the total number 
of Araucanian Indians as 49,719 men and 51,399 
women. Nearly one-half of them are in the one prov- 
ince of Cautin and another quarter in the adjoining 
province of Valdivia. They have a religion not un- 
like that of the Alaska Indians, with one language, 
unwritten until the missionaries reduced it to writing. 
The missionaries have now Genesis, Acts and part of 
Revelation translated into Araucanian. The South 
American Missionary Society of England has a good 
mission among these Araucanian or Mapuche In- 
dians, with three stations at Temuco, Maquehere (or 
Quepe), and Cholchal with churches, hospital and in- 
dustrial school. The Indian strain in the Chilean peo- 
ple is the Araucanian strain and Chile 

has in this groundwork the best fighting material to be found 
in South America to-day. That is not to be wondered at 
when one considers both the ancient soldierly qualities of 
the Spaniard and the noble fierceness of the Araucanian, 
who maintained his independence throughout a war with 
Spain that lasted close on three hundred years, and was 
never vanquished. Though the Indians of Chile are a van- 
ishing race, as a separate entity, largely owing to the habits 
of intemperance, they, in common with the Peruvian Indians, 
have acquired, they have flourishing descendants in the bulk 
of the people of Chile, whose national hero, it is worth while 
to note, is no man of Spanish blood, but the Araucanian 
cacique Lautaro, the greatest military chieftain South Amer- 
ica has produced with the single exception of San Martin.^ 

Brazil. The largest number of wild Indians to be 
found in any South American country is believed to 

• The Times, London, South American Supplement, August 30, 1910. 



THE INDIANS 203 

be in Brazil. When the Portuguese came there were 
four great Indian famiHes spread over Brazil and ad- 
jacent countries. 

The Tupy-Guaranys occupied one-fourth of Brazil, all of 
Paraguay and Uruguay, and much of Bolivia and the Argen- 
tine, and it is probable that the original seats of this family 
were in the central tablelands or in Paraguay. All Tupy 
Indians spoke dialects of one language, which the Jesuit 
missionaries soon reduced to grammatical and literary form, 
and which became a lingua franca that was understood from 
the Plate to the Amazon. Back of the coast Tupys were the 
Botacudos, the most degraded and intractable of Brazilian 
savages, remnants of whom still survive in their original 
seats in Espirito Santo, Minas, and Sao Paulo. The Caribs, 
with whom students of the history of the Caribbean Sea 
are familiar, originated in the plains of Goyaz and Matto 
Grosso and emigrated as far north as the Antilles. The 
Arawaks were most numerous in Guiana and on the Lower 
Amazon, but were also spread over Central Brazil. 

The Brazilian Indians did not survive the white man's com- 
ing to as large an extent as in Spanish-America. The pure 
Indian is found in Brazil only in regions where the white 
man has not thought it worth while to take possession, and 
the proportion of Indian blood is much smaller than in sur- 
rounding countries. In many localities, evidences of Indian 
descent are so rare as to be remarkable.^ 

The number of Indians now left in Brazil is un- 
known. The Government census of 1890, one of the 
last official attempts at the hopeless task of taking a 
census in Brazil, gives the number as 1,300,000. Ordi- 
narily it is estimated at from 1,500,000 to 2,220,000, 
but some travellers have doubled these figures and 
other students believe that the numbers are far small- 
er. A government surveyor told us there were not 
5,000 pure Indians in all the coast states. Dr. W. 
C. Farabee of the Peabody Museum, who has been in 

^ Dawson, " The South American Republics," Vol. I, aggf. 



204 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

South America in connection with the De Milhau- 
Harvard South American Expedition studying the 
Indians, writes in a personal letter: 

No attempt has ever been made at an enumeration of the 
Indians of South America. Several tribes in isolated sections 
have so far escaped the influence of civilization and religion. 
The early Spanish missions established on the headwaters of 
the Amazon were nearly all destroyed in the eighteenth cen- 
tury, so that to-day the Church has very little influence any- 
where on the Amazon, or, in other words, there is an area 
in Central South America two-thirds the size of the United 
States in which primitive religion prevails. 

Iquitos (in Peru on the Upper Amazon), with her 15,000 
to 20,000 inhabitants (whites and Indians), has no church 
or religious organization of any kind — an excellent place for 
the right man who is not afraid of a deadly climate which 
carries away hundreds every year without the comfort of a 
religious adviser. The Indian needs religious teaching much 
less than the white man in those countries. 

Most of the Brazilian Indians are utterly wild and 
untamed. The great majority of them have never 
been seen by white men. Their ways are the primi- 
tive ways of the savage. There are interesting notes 
upon them in Bates' " A Naturalist on the Amazon " 
and Cook's " By Horse, Canoe and Foot through the 
Wilderness of Brazil." A deputation from the Eng- 
lish Baptist Missionary Society made some investiga- 
tion of the Indians in southern Brazil in 1909 and in 
its report summarized from the accounts of the Sale- 
sian priests who are at work among the Bororos some 
of the facts about this one tribe. These will be suf- 
ficiently illustrative: 

The Bororos (sometimes called also Coroados) are the 
largest, most widely distributed tribe of all. They are to be 
found on the east of the State from the Goyaz boundary to 
some forty miles east of Cuiaba, and to the south of Cuiaba 



THE INDIANS 20$ 

as far as Coxim. They are usually in small parties of twenty 
to fifty in number, and in part at least are less nomadic than 
the smaller tribes. They are tribal in feeling, not regarding 
Bororos of other villages as their enemies; but those in the 
south and east wage war unceasing against the Cayapos. 
They are men of tall stature, large-boned, hairless faces, but 
with the hair of the head thick and black and long, large 
cheek-bones, large square lower jaws, with decided prog- 
nathism. Eyes small, narrow; features Chinese-like. The 
men do not show signs of age, although some we saw were 
said to be upwards of seventy years of age. Their costume 
in the forest is the " ba," a leaf of the maize envelope, and a 
coating of dirt to keep off the blood-sucking insects. In 
their villages, there may be several " captains," or elders, who 
direct their affairs; no one has authority over all of the in- 
habitants, the test for chieftainship being the singing of the 
Bacururu. Orders for the ensuing day are sung by one of 
the chiefs in the evening, together with his commendations 
and rebukes of any who that day have failed in the duties 
assigned to them. The men eat in common in their assem- 
bly hut — the " baito." They have exorcists, fetish men, called 
" Bari," and believe in God, " Marebba," who is good, eternal, 
has a mother and a very powerful son. They have also a 
devil, " Bope," who inhabits the tops of trees and mountains. 
God is beautiful, rich, well clothed ; " Bope " is ugly, infects 
their food, and has to be exorcised by the Bari. They be- 
lieve in the transmigration of souls and in a reward for the 
good, while the bad experience an imquenchable hunger and 
thirst. 

The " Baris " have the power to evoke departed spirits, 
and do so by a piece of wood, ten inches by four inches, 
whirled round the head at the end of a string. At this sound 
the women flee and cover the head; the death penalty is the 
result of being too inquisitive. Their mode of burial is pe- 
culiar. For two days they " wake " the corpse, and then bury 
it for twenty days in a very shallow excavation, with a mat 
only for covering. At the end of this time they remove it 
to the neighboring stream and wash the bones, which they 
place in a specially made basket. This is carried to the men's 
assembly house, and the skull is decorated with short, col- 
ored feathers in patterns, while the relatives gash them- 



206 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

selves till the blood rolls down them. Then head and bones 
are placed in another basket and put out of sight in a place 
not generally known. 

Their arms are bows of "arueira," a black wood similar 
to the African palisanda, measuring some six feet in length, 
and their arrows are six feet long, of which four feet is 
reed, and the two feet of point is " arueri," with a head of 
bone from the thigh-bones of birds. The arrow is straight, 
feathered for about eight inches.^ 

There is a small government reservation of Indians 
near Para where there are 1,500 or so among whom 
the Roman Catholic Church is working, and there! are 
still remnants of the work which that Church did in 
the days of the Jesuits at Villa Rica and eleswhere in 
northwestern Parana. Old bridges and monasteries 
and roads long abandoned recall the days in the six- 
teenth century when the Jesuits had great estates op- 
erated by thousands of Indian serfs in the region 
where now Brazil and Paraguay and Uruguay meet. 
On the upper Amazon, as Dr. Farabee says, practi- 
cally nothing is being done. 

Bolivia. In Bolivia and Peru one comes upon the 
Indian problem in South America in a very definite 
and practical form. According to the Bolivian official 
statement there are 903,126 Indians in Bolivia, and 
485,293 mestizos or half-breeds or cholas. The In- 
dians, mestizos and whites are curiously distributed 
in the various departments or provinces. I pick out 
the principal ones : 

Indian Mestizo White 

La Paz 333,421 43,100 36,255 

Potosi 186,947 89,159 21,713 

Cochabamba 75,5i4 169,161 60,605 

Santa Cruz 94,526 44,248 59,470 

^ Report of the Deputation to South America, April, 1909-February, 

1910, 16. 




Indians In Bolivia 




Loads of Sugar Cane, Bahia, Brazil 



THE INDIANS 207 

The mestizos are not most numerous where the In- 
dians are most common. And it is of interest that 
the mestizos are less numerous in the section where 
the Indians are Aymaras. Of the 900,000 Indians 
perhaps two-thirds or less are Quichuas and one-third 
or more Aymaras. The Government Geografia says 
that 91 per cent of the Indians are subject to law, 
and nine per cent in a full state of barbarism. Some 
are called cannibals. We saw in the La Paz prison 
some Indians who had been convicted of killing and 
eating some liberal soldiers entrapped in a church by 
a conservative priest and delivered to the Indians. 
Since 1878, the Geografia adds, the race has been 
" wounded to death." That year famine and drought 
brought pest and these were followed by alcoholism, 
and now the birth rate is less than the death rate. 
Nevertheless according to the government statement 
the numbers have increased since 1846 when there 
are said to have been 701,558 Indians out of a popu- 
lation of 1,373,896. This would leave 662,338 mes- 
tizos and whites. On the basis of these figures the 
Indians have increased 201,538, or 29 per cent, and 
the rest of the population only 54,043, or 8 per cent. 
The Geografia lays the blame for the slow progress 
of the country largely on the Indian population and 
its unwillingness to accept any innovation. 

There are those who deny that these Indians are 
capable of improvement, and the Government has met 
with small success in the few efforts made for them. 
It has perhaps a score of traveling teachers who go 
about holding schools, and offers, we were told, the 
sum of twenty boHvianos for each Indian taught to 
read and write, an attainment not eagerly sought be- 
cause it lays the Indian open to conscription, army 



208 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

service being the duty of full citizens and literacy 
being a requirement for full citizenship. The Bolivian 
Indians look very much like our own North American 
Indians, but they have never had their savage ways. 
They are a mild, industrious, unambitious people, 
though a few successful men including at least one 
president, have come out from them. They are 
counted Roman Catholic, but the Church has done 
nothing for them in the way of education or enlighten- 
ment, and in many places they have no attachment to 
it. In Professor Bingham's "Across South Amer- 
ica," there are some interesting notes on the Quichuas 
and Aymaras, the attitude of the white Bolivians to 
them, and the general political conditions in Bolivia in 
consequence of this large and backward Indian ele- 
ment: 

There is no doubt about the Quichuas being a backward 
race. From the earliest historical times these poor Indians 
have virtually been slaves. Bred up to look upon subjection 
as their natural lot, they bear it as the dispensation of Provi- 
dence. The Incas treated them well, so far as we can judge, 
and took pains to see that the irrigation works, the foot- 
paths over the mountains, the suspension bridges over the 
raging torrents and tambos for the convenience of travellers 
should all be kept in good condition. The gold-hunting Span- 
ish conquistador es, on the other hand, had no interest in the 
servile Quichuas further than to secure their services as 
forced laborers in the mines. The modern Bolivians have 
done little to improve their condition. . . . 

How much the extremely severe conditions of life that 
prevail on this arid plateau have had to do in breaking the 
spirit of the race is a question. It is a generally accepted 
fact that a race who are dependent for their living on irri- 
gating ditches, can easily be conquered. All that the invad- 
ing army has to do is to destroy the dams, ruin the crops, 
and force the inhabitants to face starvation. 

The Quichua shows few of the traits which wc ordinarily 



THE INDIANS 20g 

connect with mountaineers. His country is too forlorn to 
give him an easy living or much time for thought. He is 
half starved nearly all the time. His only comfort comes 
from chewing coca leaves. . . . Coca has deadened his sen- 
sibilities to a degree that passes comprehension. It has made 
him stupid, willing to submit to almost any injury, lacking 
in all ambition, caring for almost none of the things which 
we consider the natural desires of the human heart. . . . 

The truth is, the Quichua not only has no ambition, he 
has long ago ceased to care whether you or he or anybody 
else has more than just barely enough to keep body and soul 
together. . . .1 

The Quichuas are a mild and inoffensive folk, but the 
Aymaras, heavier in build, coarser featured, and more vigor- 
ous in general appearance, are brutally insolent in their man- 
ner and unruly in their behavior. We were even regaled 
with stories of their cannibalism on certain occasions, but un- 
fortunately had no opportunity of proving the truth of such 
statements. Neither Quichuas nor Aymaras are at all thrifty, 
and we were everywhere impressed with their great poverty. 
Their clothing is generally the merest rags and their food is 
as meager as can possibly be imagined. Coca and chicha 
(i. e., cocaine and alcohol) seem to be the beginning and end 
of life with them. 

It is unfortunate that no efforts are being made to establish 
a good system of public schools and enforce attendance. One 
of the greatest difficulties in the way of such an undertaking 
is the fact that the Indians not only have no interest in 
securing the education of their children, but also that they 
find it to their advantage to speak their own tongue rather 
than Spanish. Probably less than fifteen per cent of the 
population speak Spanish with fluency. They are lacking in 
ambition, seem to have no desire to raise produce, bear ill- 
will towards strangers, and prefer not to assist travellers to 
pass through their country. Even if a man has plenty of 
chickens and sheep, he will generally refuse to sell any al- 
though you offer him an excellent price. With coaxing and 
coca you may succeed. Sometimes he pretends not to under- 
stand Spanish and replies to all questions in guttural Quichua 
or Aymara. 

1 104-108. 



210 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

So large a percentage of the population are Indians that 
nearly all the whites are actively interested in politics and 
would like to be officeholders. It is said that all elections 
are merely forms through which the party in power goes, 
in order to maintain its supremacy. 

The majority of the inhabitants are in no sense fitted to 
be the citizens of a republic. However much the theoretical 
lover of liberty may bemoan the fact that Bolivia is in reality 
an oligarchy, one cannot help feeling that that is the only 
possible outcome of an attempt to simulate the forms of a 
republic in a country whose inhabitants are so deficient both 
mentally and morally.^ 

Peru, Of Peru's total population of 3,500,000, 
one-third are ethnic crossbreeds and 1,700,000 are 
Indians. There are scores of minor divisions of the 
Indians as there are also in Bolivia, but the Indians 
of Peru are almost all grouped among the Quichuas. 
They are less independent than the Aymaras of north- 
ern Bolivia, and it becomes less difficult after moving 
among them, as Professor Bingham discovered, to un- 
derstand the wonderful exploits of the early Spanish 
conquerors. Equipped as they were and supported by 
strange traditions, and as superior to the Indians in 
intelligence as they surpassed them in recklessness, a 
small company of such adventurers as Pizarro and his 
men could easily do what they did. A small pack of 
wolves can scatter a million sheep, and the Indians of 
the Incas were nothing more than sheep against the 
Spaniards. With the Aztecs and the Araucanians it 
was different, and Cortez and Valdivia had no such 
simple task as Pizarro, whose great conquest was of 
nature and not of man. 

Mrs. Turner, a Peruvian, with Indian blood in her 
veins, has written a novel depicting the present condi- 

^ 153-155. 



THE INDIANS 211 

tion of the Peruvian Indians and protesting against 
their wrongs. It is entitled " Birds Without a Nest " 
and an EngHsh translation is published by Thynne, 
of Paternoster Row, London. The story turns around 
a characteristic South American perplexity. A young 
man and woman about to marry find that they are 
children of the same priest. Europeans on the west 
coast declare that the Indians of Peru are the least 
cared for, the most wronged Indians on the coast, 
that they have no ambition for independent power 
because, on the whole, they suffer less when serfs of 
some man strong enough to protect them from others, 
however tributary they may be to him. Back in the 
eastern valleys there are many little known tribes 
and large numbers of Indians who have no 
communal life. In a paper entitled " Some Cus- 
toms of the Macheyengas," Dr. W. C. Farabee states 
that this tribe has no religious ideas. They make no 
offerings, nor prayers. " There is no communion be- 
tween themselves and any Spirit. They are uncon- 
trolled in the slightest degree by any power or influence 
outside of themselves. Thus they live remarkably free 
from the conventions and restraints of custom and 
reHgion." 

While in Arequipa in 1909 we met a Peruvian law- 
yer, a " free thinker " in religion, but greatly con- 
cerned for the unhappy condition of the Indians in his 
country. He was working in the interest of the es- 
tablishment of schools among them. There were now 
600 schools in the Spanish language among the Indians 
in Peru, he said, supported by the Government. The 
race was capable of improvement. Two Presidents 
of Peru had come from it. The Government wanted 
to teach the Indians in Spanish but they could not 



212 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

learn in such schools and, moreover, they were not al- 
lowed by their masters to go to Spanish schools on the 
great farms, as the owners found that with a knowl- 
edge of Spanish they would become discontented and 
aspiring. He felt sure there would be no such oppo- 
sition to schools in the Quichua language, which more- 
over would give the only possible education as the 
Indians did not know Spanish and in Spanish schools 
accomplished no more than mechanical memorization. 
Eighty per cent of the Indians in Peru, this advocate 
said, were serfs, the rest free Indians, but all were 
subject to constant injustice, were often seized illegally 
by night for military service, the army being made up 
of Indian conscripts, and were incapable through igno- 
rance of Spanish of securing any redress in the courts. 
The present administration, he added, had suppressed 
some of the schools among the Indians which had 
been supported by the preceding administration. 

The wild Indians are on the east side of Peru along 
the upper tributaries of the Amazon. The great body 
of the Indians are on the high plateaus and these are 
Quichuas. In their social and moral condition Dr. T. 
B. Wood, one of the veteran missionary workers in 
South America, sees a special opportunity and need: 

Their social condition, being not that of savages, dwelling 
in tents or wigwams, forming scattered tribes, sustained by- 
hunting and fishing; but that of dense communities living in 
towns and villages of substantial houses, and sustained by- 
farming, grazing and manufacturing, all on a petty scale but 
ready for development on a grand scale as fast as the people 
can be trained to modern methods and uplifted by moral re- 
generation. 

Their moral condition being on the decline, they are 
lower in the moral scale to-day than they were under the 
Incas. The friars and priests who swarmed in among them 



THE INDIANS 213 

with the Spanish conquest and have dominated their religious 
life ever since, instead of teaching them better things, have 
kept them in ignorance and superstition, and exploited their 
vices to get money from them, for nearly four hundred 
years. Their numerous religious festivals and saints' days, 
instead of stimulating them to holiness and usefulness, on the 
contrary overwhelm them with temptations to drunkenness 
and other forms of moral relaxation, sinking each new gen- 
eration lower than its predecessors. 

Colombia and Ecuad^or. It is estimated that in 
Colombia there are 250,000 Indians. Some people 
call almost the whole population of Colombia Indian, 
and there is doubtless a large element of Indian blood 
in it, but the people speak Spanish and are Latin 
Americans and not Indians. The best information we 
could find gave the total pure Indian population of 
Colombia as not over 250,000. On the boat on which 
we went up the Magdalena River to Honda en route 
to Bogota there was the young son of the king of the 
Indians near the Gulf of Darien, who number perhaps 
20,000 or more. He was a very bright, attractive lit- 
tle boy, who spoke no Spanish but was being taken to 
Bogota by a Colombian officer to be placed in the 
government military school. There is another tribe 
of Indians of about the same size in the Santa Marta 
region in northeastern Colombia, where there are rem- 
nants of old paved roads showing that there was once 
a considerable Indian civilization here. There are 
some small scattered tribes of savage Indians back 
from the Magdalena River. The largest Indian popu- 
lation, however, is in Boyaca to the southeast of Bo- 
gota. A prominent lawyer returning to Bogota from 
an exile now ended by the retirement of Reyes told 
us that the Roman Catholic Church, as far as he knew, 
was doing nothing in Colombia for the Indians whom 



214 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

he estimated at 200,000, but that he knew it was 
working among the Indians of Ecuador, of whom he 
said there were 600,000. Of Ecuador the " States- 
man's Year Book " says that the bulk of the total 
population of 1,400,000 is Indian, that the inhabitants 
of pure European blood are few, those of mixed blood 
about 400,000 and the civilized Indians about 200,000. 
These Indians of Colombia and Ecuador do not speak 
the widely used Quichua tongue, but their own dialects. 
One who has lived among the Ecuador Indians 
writes of them: 

They are certainly sunken the lowest of all the inhabitants 
both mentally and morally, and I understand that it has been 
even acknowledged by Catholic writers that their condition 
is worse now than when they were first discovered and con- 
quered by the united representatives of the Spanish Church 
and state. If such is the case, we can safely say that there 
is no hope for the Indians from their present masters. It 
is true that some commendable efforts have been made by 
the present liberal government to better their condition in the 
matter of higher wages and protection against abuse, but to 
really elevate and educate them beyond the covers of the 
Catholic catechism, nothing has been done or can be done, 
except through the powerful medium of the Gospel of Christ. 
And to accomplish anything in this way, the upper classes 
must be touched at the same time, for the greater part of 
the wretchedness of the Indians is the result of the white 
man's attitiide of mind toward them. The damage done 
them, equally through a false religion and through lordly 
oppression, has been of three centuries' duration, and mere 
legislative measures can never cure ills of such a confirmed 
nature.! 

Summary. The following table gives the probable 
Indian population of South America. The estimates 
err, if at all, on the side of excess. 

^ C. S. Detweiler, " Social Conditions in Ecuador," The Gospel Mes- 
sage, November, 1901. 



THE INDIANS 215 

Brazil 1,300,000 

Argentina 30,000 

Paraguay 50,000 

Chile 102,118 

Bolivia 900,000 

Peru 1,700,000 

Ecuador 1,000,000 

Colombia 250,000 

Estimates of the total number of Indians in South 
America given to us ranged from 3,000,000 to 15,000,- 
000, and of the Quichua Indians alone from 2,000,000 
to 6,000,000. The men who had travelled most 
through interior South America v^ere as a rule the 
most conservative in their estimates. One of these, 
Mr. Wenberg, formerly agent of the American Bible 
Society in Bolivia, who had travelled thousands of 
miles in the heart of South America, told us he did 
not believe there were more than 5,000,000 Indians in 
Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia and Peru. There 
are at least seven missions working among the Indians. 
The most needy and uncared for sections are the In- 
dians of the Amazon, the Aymaras of Bolivia, the 
Quichuas of Bolivia and Peru, and the tribes of Ecua- 
dor and Colombia. There are savages among these 
Indians, but they are not unapproachable. The great- 
er difficulties are due to climate and the geographical 
inaccessibility of the people and to the moral and spir- 
itual needs, but these are precisely the reasons for our 
going to them. The South American Governments 
have not sought to do much among them, and the rub- 
ber trade and other enterprises have despoiled them. 
Gruesome stories are told of their exploitation in the 
rubber regions. The Quichuas and Aymaras are more 
hopeful than our North American Indians and ade- 
quate educational and evangelistic work among them 



2l6 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

would surely effect in a few generations greater im- 
provements than have been wrought among them by 
the agencies which have controlled them for the past 
four hundred years. 

The South American Indians on the Andean plateau 
are a patient, saddened, hopeless people. What the 
London Times says of the Peruvian Indians might be 
said in greater or less measure of all these peoples 
from Venezuela down through Bolivia: 

The Indians of Peru were never the fine fighters that the 
Araucanians were, with the wild love of liberty that led the 
warriors of that race to their greatest deeds; but they cer- 
tainly produced men of military genius in the days before the 
Conquest, men who were not mere fighters, but were great 
"organizers of victory," masters of strategy, and, in a word, 
scientific soldiers of the modern type. Essentially, however, 
they were a peace-loving people ; and so they have remained, 
patient, submissive as Chinese, docile, long-suffering as sheep. 
To remember their great and noble past, the governing 
instinct their rulers displayed, and their mighty civilization, 
and to see them now with their individuality crushed out as 
the result of their long years of slavery, and suffering a heavy 
death-rate, owing to acquired intemperance, to poverty, and 
to the insanitary conditions in which they live, is the saddest 
thing in South America.^ 

Perhaps, though, this is not the saddest thing. But 
the fact that there are yet sadder things shows how 
deep is the need and how strong is the appeal from 
this continent of long-neglected opportunity. 

* The Times, London, South American Supplement, August 30, 1910. 



CHAPTER VIII 

PROTESTANT MISSIONS IN SOUTH 
AMERICA 

The first effort of the Protestant Churches after 
the Reformation to engage in foreign missions was 
that of the Church in Geneva to send the Gospel to 
Brazil. A detailed account of this effort is given in 
the second chapter of Parkman's " Pioneers of France 
in the New World." The mission lasted only a little 
more than ten years, the Portuguese driving out the 
French in 1567 and destroying the hope of a French 
Protestant influence which might have given Brazil 
an entirely different destiny. 

The next Protestant effort was by the Dutch, who 
invaded Brazil and captured Bahia in 1624 and who 
brought Dutch ministers with them, alleging as part of 
their purpose in invading South America the introduc- 
tion of a pure religion. Much of the religion which 
they brought was as formal as that which they sought 
to displace, but there were also excellent men among 
them who published good religious books in Portu- 
guese and learned Guarany, the language of the In- 
dians, and evangelized both them and the negroes. 
But in 1654 the Dutch withdrew and left almost no 
traces behind. 

A century later, in 1735, the Moravian missions 
were begun in British Guiana and three years later in 

217 



2l8 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

Dutch Guiana, and in later years other missions were 
estabhshed in these possessions. But we are concerned 
in this study with Latin America, and its next Protest- 
ant missionary visitor was Henry Martyn, who, on his 
way to India in 1805, touched at Bahia long enough 
to ascend the battery overlooking the Bay of All 
Saints and to pray for the evangelization of the peo- 
ples of the lands about him. As he gazed upon the 
scene, he repeated the hymn: 

" O'er the gloomy hills of darkness 
Look, my soul, be still and gaze." 

Before resuming his voyage, he found opportunities 
to enter the monasteries, Vulgate in hand, and reason 
with the priests out of the Scriptures. 

As early as 1823, after the independence of the 
republics, missionaries were allowed to open schools 
in Buenos Aires, to conduct preaching services and 
to circulate Bibles. The work was soon given up. 
For some time, however, the circulation of the Bible 
was widely tolerated in the new states. In Bogota, a 
Bible Society was organized. The Secretary of State 
was its President and ecclesiastics were among its 
officers. In many places, the priests facilitated the 
circulation of the New Testament in Spanish and the 
Lancasterian schools using Scripture selections as 
reading lessons were established in Argentina, Mon- 
tevideo, Chile, Peru and Colombia, Guatemala and 
Mexico. It seemed for a time that the evangeHcal 
movement would permeate the Catholic Church and 
thus make possible the evangelization of these lands 
without the introduction of Protestantism.^ But the 
Roman Church soon rejected the reform. The schools 

* See Brown, "Latin America," 185—190, 



PROTESTANT MISSIONS 219 

died. The circulation of the Bible was forbidden and 
the Church set herself against the movement of free- 
dom and progress.^ 

The first enduring Protestant mission to South 
America began with the sacrifice of Capt. Allen Gar- 
diner who perished of starvation in September, 185 1, 
in Spaniard Harbor, Tierra del Fuego, in a cavern to 
which the searching party was directed by a hand 
painted on the rocks with Psalm 62 : 5-8 under it : 

" My soul, wait thou only upon God ; 
For my expectation is from Him. 
He only is my rock and my salvation. 
He is my high tower; I shall not be moved. 
With God is my salvation and my glory : 
The rock of my strength and my refuge is in God. 
Trust in Him at all times ye people; 
Pour o^t your heart before Him; 
God is a refuge for us." 

Gardiner had been instrumental in establishing in 
1844 the South American Missionary Society and his 
death gave its work a new impulse, as the heroism 
and devotion of his life have inspired workers at 
home and abroad in all Churches and in all lands.^ It 
was of the results of the work which Gardiner began 
that Charles Darwin spoke in his often quoted testi- 
mony to the value of Christian missions : " The suc- 
cess of the Tierra del Fuego Mission is most won- 
derful and charms me, as I always prophesied utter 
failure. It is a grand success. I shall feel proud if 
your committee think fit to elect me an honorary mem- 
ber of your Society.^ 

^ Brown, "Latin America," 190-193. 

2 Young, " From Cape Horn to Panama," Ch. 1 ; Marsh and Stirling, 
" The Story of Commander Allen Gardiner, R.N." 

3 Young, " The Success of Christian Missions," 254-259. 



220 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

Gardiner had made visits to Chile and BoHvia be- 
fore undertaking his last heroic mission to Tierra del 
Fuego and he had had experience also in Argentina 
and Patagonia. Every student of missions should 
study his bold and devoted career, in Marsh and Stir- 
ling's " The Story of Commander Allen Gardiner, 
R.N." or Young's " From Cape Horn to Panama." 

Captain Gardiner's mission to the Indians was in 
purely heathen territory and among the aborigines. 
The first permanent work in the Latin States was 
begun by Dr. Kalley, a pious Scotch physician who 
had worked in Madeira in 1842-1846 and came to RiO' 
de Janeiro about 1855, where he built up an abiding 
evangelistic work in his own independent way. He 
had been preceded in Brazil by representatives of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States, to 
which belongs the honor of the first attempt to plant 
the Gospel in Brazil, in modern times. The Method- 
ist Mission began in 1836, but financial pressure of 
those times led to its abandonment in 1842. 

A temporary work had also been done in Rio in 
1 851-1853 by the Rev. J. C. Fletcher, a Presbyterian 
minister who worked under the American and For- 
eign Christian Union and the Seamen's Friend So- 
ciety. The American and Foreign Christian Union 
beside this temporary work in Rio began the work 
in Chile, transferring it later to the Presbyterian 
Board. The Union some years ago ceased to carry on 
active missionary work. It has now only a nominal 
existence and all its assets have been funded for the 
benefit of the American Church in Paris. 

Dr. Kalley's work was independent. The first de- 
nominational work established in Brazil which has 
never been discontinued was the Presbyterian Mis- 




m 



PROTESTANT MISSIONS 221 

sion in Brazil founded by the Rev. A. G. Simonton 
in 1859. Mr. Simonton reported as follows the con- 
ditions which he found prevailing: 

To my mind, the most astonishing feature of the religious 
condition of Brazil is its almost total lack of all religion. 
Unless I am mistaken, Brazil is singular in this respect, even 
among the most thoroughly Roman Catholic nations. Not 
only has religion degenerated from being a thing of con- 
viction to a mere habit, but it has become a habit to pay no 
attention to its outward forms. The number of church-goers 
is very small. Confession is falling into disuse. Priests are 
dissolute, and not unfrequently scoffers. A pure and univer- 
sal indifference seems to reign. The extremity of the Pope 
has produced no public prayers, and Garibaldi and Cavour 
are heroes. It is said that no people can be without a relig- 
ion; if so, fev7 nations can be much more destitute than 
Brazil. There are special occasions, however, which show 
that he would be greatly deceived who imagined that their 
religion is like that which is found in Protestant countries. 
At times they become religious. One of these times is the 
hour of death. Then the priest is sure of employment and 
pay. Confession, absolution, the sacrament, and extreme unc- 
tion are the sources of trust in that hour when all men would 
be religious if they could.^ 

The Presbyterian Mission in Brazil ^ was followed 
by the mission of the Episcopal Church of the United 
States, begun in i860 but abandoned after a few years 
and reestablished in 1889; next by the mission of 
the Southern Presbyterian Church in 1869, then by 
the mission of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, 
in 1876 ^ and by the Southern Baptist Mission in 
1882.^ 

Permanent missionary work was begun in Argen- 

* " South American Missions," 6. 

2 See " Historical Sketches of Presbyterian Missions." 

* John, " Handbook of Methodist Missions." 

* Ray, " Southern Baptist Foreign Missions." 



222 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

tina and Uruguay by the Methodist Episcopal Church 
a few years later than the permanent work in Brazil, 
but its permanence was rudely shaken at times in 
the early years. The first Protestant worship in the 
city of Buenos Aires was held by James Thomson 
of the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1820, 
nine persons being present at the service in a private 
house. The meetings thus begun were continued by 
a Methodist layman and then taken up by some Pres- 
byterian workers, but the latter were withdrawn in 
1836 and until recent years the field was cared for 
only by the Methodists. The story of the work is 
told in Reid's " Missions and Missionary Society of 
the M. E. Church," Vol. I, Part IV. 

Next to Brazil and the republics of the Rio de la 
Plata, Colombia is the oldest Protestant mission field 
in South America. The Rev. H. B. Pratt, who is still 
living, was sent to Bogota by the Presbyterian Church 
in 1856. " At that time the government interposed 
no hindrances; but the swarming priests were prodi- 
gal of impediments, and the ignorance of the masses 
greatly retarded the circulation of the truth through 
the press. * He found among the youth and the men 
no love for the Church, but a widespread deism; 
he found a low standard of morality everywhere 
prevalent, the utter absence of spiritual life, and a 
resting only in outward ceremonials for an inward 
preparation for the life to come.* " ^ 

Without detailing the history of the establish- 
ment of missions in each South American land, it 
will suffice to summarize the last statistical state- 
ment (1911) regarding the work in South America, 

1 " Historical Sketch of the Missions in South America," 39» Sixth 
Edition, Revised. 



PROTESTANT MISSIONS 223 

as given in " The World Atlas of Christian Mis- 
sions." ^ 

Total No. Total No. Total No. Total No. 

of Societies. of Foreign Ordained & of Corn- 
Missionaries. Unordained municants. 
Native Workers. 

Argentine Republic 19 199 189 4,800 

Chile 6 97 134 5,616 

Uruguay 6 27 2^ 925 

Paraguay 3 22 18 147 

Brazil 19 244 364 28,903 

Bolivia 6 16 3 54 

Peru 5 45 82 572 

Ecuador 4 19 5 61 

Venezuela 6 19 10 114 

Colombia 2 10 6 125 

One of the most interesting single pieces of mis- 
sionary work to be found in South America is the 
enterprise in Buenos Aires heretofore known as the 
" Argentine Evangelical Schools." 

These schools are day schools for poor children, 
begun in 1898 by the Rev. William C. Morris, who 
is connected with the South American Missionary 
Society of England. There are now over 5,000 chil- 
dren taught in these schools and the work is alive 
with the intense, energetic, practical spirit of Mr. 
Morris. No one can see these great throngs of chil- 
dren, orderly, well taught, reading the New Testa- 
ment as one of their text-books, inspired with the 
sense of duty to God and to their country, prepared 
practically for life by industrial training, without being 
uplifted by the sight. It is a wonderful work and 
shows what can be accomplished by one man of faith 
and indomitable energy and fearless obedience to the 
call of God. The schools are largely supported b^ 

1 96-98. 



224 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

gifts in Argentina, but the work is an enormous bur- 
den for one man. They enjoy now the favor of the 
Argentine Government, which gave them a subsidy 
in 1907 of $48,000 Argentine money. The municipal- 
ity of the city of Buenos Aires gave them $5,000 
Argentine money. The effect of this work has been 
to set both a moral and pedagogical standard for gov- 
ernment schools as mission schools ought to do, and 
also to quicken the Roman Catholic Church to take 
up work which it had utterly neglected until this ex- 
ample was set before it. 

The President of the Republic has expressed his 
sincere sympathy with the work that is being carried 
on in these schools, and they have no warmer friends 
than are to be found in the Argentine National Con- 
gress. They have had great opposition to overcome, 
however, which still wars against them on the part of 
the Roman Church in the Argentine. 

One of the best known Protestant Mission schools 
in South America is the Mackenzie College at Sao 
Paulo. The College was incorporated by the Board 
of Regents of the University of the State of New 
York in July, 1890. The purpose which the trustees 
had in view in seeking incorporation in this country 
was to extend and perpetuate the type of Christian 
education commenced by the Presbyterian Mission 
in 1870. The mission school had grown into a com- 
plete graded system of primary, intermediate, gram- 
mar and high school instruction with more than 500 
pupils of both sexes, having a Normal class for train- 
ing its own teachers, a manual training shop under 
skilled direction — the first one in Brazil — and a kin- 
dergarten, also the first one in Brazil. It was patron- 
ized by all classes and had more applicants than 



PROTESTANT MISSIONS 225 

places. Out of it had come, largely, the reorganiza- 
tion of the public schools on the American model. 
The College now has engineering, commercial and 
arts courses and the total enrollment for 1910 in all 
departments of the College and subordinate schools 
was 827. 

The Protestant missions in Brazil have been the 
most successful and fruitful missions in South Amer- 
ica. There are now not less than 28,903 Protestant 
communicants in Brazil. Before the great and criti- 
cal demands of the present hour there is no greater 
need in South America than the need of unity and 
zeal in these strong Brazilian churches. As one of 
the ablest Christian leaders of the country says : " The 
liberal stream of opinion is growing rapidly against 
the Roman clericalism which, from every side, in- 
vades our country. Very soon the religious question 
will be put seriously to our countrymen. It is neces- 
sary that the evangelical churches be prepared, by 
brotherly love and broad evangelical views, in order 
not to repulse this approaching tide." This is but 
part of the larger problem which confronts the 
Churches in Brazil — the problem of a vivification of 
the church life and a fresh kindling of the fires of 
her devotion and service in a time of peculiar need 
and opportunity. " I beg you to arouse your country 
to come to our help,'' one of the leading men in 
western Parana said to us in the little hotel at Im- 
bituve. He is the largest landholder in the west of 
this state, and a free thinker, but a lover of his coun- 
try. " I dread, in the interest of our nation, the as- 
sault which Jesuitism is making upon it." Will the 
churches here and in Brazil meet the situation ? "I 
am confident," writes one of the younger leaders of the 



226 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

Church in a letter, "that this problem will be soon 
solved, on broad lines, and that our ministry will 
hold its own in this country, which is developing in 
a wonderful way. Otherwise, with the strong policy 
of the Roman Catholic Church and the materializa- 
tion of the public mind by the facilities of money 
making and the industrial evolution of our country 
we will lose our day, as we have lost it in France and 
in Spain during the last decades of the Reformation/* 

In Chile there is now not a resident foreign mis- 
sionary in the five central provinces of O'Higgins, 
Calchagua, Curico, Talca and Linares with a popula- 
tion of 692,000. There are a few Chilean preachers, 
not more than three or four, but not a missionary. 

In Peru there are all told less than fifty mission- 
aries, including wives and teachers, for a population 
of 3,500,000, as great as that of the states of Texas 
and Rhode Island with an area nearly three times 
that of the state of Texas. In northern Peru no one 
is at work. There are populous villages here in fer- 
tile valleys where there would be unlimited oppor- 
tunities for work. And all this section is some day to 
have a great development. The best cotton and 
coffee are raised here, cotton which is exported to 
the United States as well as Europe and coffee which 
rivals Brazil's. No country in South America seems 
likely to be more favorably affected than Peru by 
the Panama canal. The commercial interests of 
Americans in its railways, in the great copper smelter 
in Cerro de Pasco, in rubber, make our investment 
in the interest of evangelization and education pitiful. 
Our disproportion will surely return upon us again 
in ways for which we shall not have prepared. 

The great need of South America is not more 



PROTESTANT MISSIONS 227 

independent missionaries or mission agencies but a 
great strengthening of the work of the missions with 
strong Church constituencies behind them, which will 
do permanent and solid work. 

But all this work in Latin America is disapproved 
on the ground that it is for Christian people, that we 
are invading territory already occupied by a sister 
Church. As we have already seen the Protestant 
missions in South America are among nominally 
Christian people and we have examined the religious 
conditions among these people which forbid our leav- 
ing the field to the agency which has been in control 
of it. But it will be well now, in closing, squarely to 
face the question of the legitimacy of foreign mission 
work among the nominal Christians of South America. 
It is not, however, a new question. It is as old as the 
Reformation. And in modern missions it was a more 
living question seventy-five years ago than it is to-day. 
The American missions to the Nestorian and Arme- 
nian peoples in the ancient Syrian and Gregorian 
Churches, to the Greeks in Turkey and to the Copts 
in Egypt, and the efiFort to meet the dire needs of 
South America, which was renouncing both Spain 
and Rome and religion, raised this issue then as viv- 
idly as it can be raised to-day. The objection then 
and now rests upon two assumptions, first, that these 
nominal Christians are Christian and do not need 
missionary work in their behalf, and second, that 
foreign mission work among them is simple prosely- 
tizing and therefore illegitimate and unworthy. 

The story of the American missions to the Oriental 
Churches is a fascinating and suggestive story and 
there are many lessons to be learned from it. (i) 
The Roman Catholic Church, which objects to our 



228 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

foreign missions in Latin America, does so on prin- 
ciples which it rejects in its dealings with these Orien- 
tal Churches. It has for years carried on foreign 
missions among them with a view to absorbing them 
in the Roman Catholic Church. In going to these 
Churches we have done just what the Roman Catholic 
Church has done. In some cases, as among the Nes- 
torians in Persia, our missions were first, followed 
afterwards by the Roman Catholics. (2) The condi- 
tions of these Churches demanded help from Chris- 
tendom. They were illiterate. Their worship often 
was in dead languages. Their polity was tyrannical. 
Their religion was a travesty of Christianity. They 
were an insuperable obstacle to the evangelization of 
the Mohammedans. To have neglected them in the 
name of an ecclesiastical theory would have been a 
shame and reproach which the Christian spirit of the 
American Churches refused to bear. (3) The pur- 
pose of our missions to these Churches was not 
proselytism but spiritual vivification. The first mis- 
sions to the Nestorians in Persia were instructed to 
have as their object in establishing this mission: " (a) 
To convince the people that they came among them 
with no design to take away their religious privileges 
nor to subject them to any foreign ecclesiastical 
power; (b) To enable the Nestorian Church, through 
the grace of God, to exert a commanding influence in 
the spiritual regeneration of Asia." The purpose in 
Turkey among the Armenians was the same. The 
separate Evangelical churches grew up in spite of the 
influence of the missions. The old bottles would not 
accept the new wine. The Gregorian Church ex- 
communicated the men who embraced the new life 
which was in reality only the restoration of the old, 



PROTESTANT MISSIONS 229 

and in Persia, rightly or wrongly, the evangelical 
element moved away from what was dead and en- 
slaving and seemed incapable of a spiritual refor- 
mation. 

But our concern now is with Latin America and 
I wish to ask and answer four questions, i. Are 
our missions in Latin American lands legitimate and 
necessary? 2. If so, can they be conducted without 
encountering the antagonism of the Roman CathoHc 
Church in Latin America and in the United States? 
3. If not, what course are we to pursue? 4. If 
we are to go forward with the missions how are we 
to get for them that interest and support at home 
to which they are entitled, not less than our missions 
in Asia and Africa? 

I, Are our missions in Latin American lands legiti- 
mate and necessary? The evidence already presented 
in these studies is sufficient answer. It will suffice 
here simply to summarize what has been already set 
forth in detail. 

(i) The moral condition of the South American 
countries warrants and demands the presence of any 
form of religion which will war against sin and bring 
men the power of righteous life. 

(2) The Protestant missionary enterprise with its 
stimulus to education and its appeal to the rational 
nature of man is required by the intellectual needs 
of South America. 

(3) Protestant missions are justified in South 
America in order to give the Bible to the people. 

(4) Protestant missions are justified and de- 
manded in South America by the character of the 
Roman Catholic priesthood. 

(5) Protestant missions in South America are jus- 



230 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

tified because the Roman Catholic Church has not 
given the people Christianity. 

(6) Protestant missions are justified in South 
America because the South American Roman Catho- 
lic Church is at the same time so strong and so 
weak. 

But these considerations are far from exhausting 
what is to be said in answer to the objection that our 
Protestant work in Latin America is an " intrusion 
upon territory already occupied and fully covered by 
another branch of the Christian Church ; " that this 
other branch of the Church is a " true Church, exert- 
ing a beneficial influence and much better adapted than 
the Protestant Churches to meeting the needs of ro- 
mantic and emotional people like the Latin Americans, 
who are deeply devoted to their Church, and who can 
only be either perplexed or angered by Protestant in- 
vasion/' These opinions are shared by many good 
people who know devout Christian Catholics in the 
United States, and not unnaturally assume that the 
Catholic Church is everywhere what they believe it to 
be here. A candid examination of these objections 
will show their invalidity and the adequate warrant 
of Protestant missions in Latin America. 

I. They have not intruded. " Every important 
movement of Protestantism in these countries has had 
its origin in the response to a call coming from these 
countries themselves and from the native people. 
Everywhere are to be found those who long for bet- 
ter things and who have sent out their cry into the 
Christian world until it has been heard and heeded." ^ 
In 1882, President Barrios of Guatemala urged the 
Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions to send a 

^"Protestant Missions in South America," 113. 



PROTESTANT MISSIONS 23I 

missionary to Guatemala and offered to pay his ex- 
penses to the field. When General Sarmiento was 
elected President of the Argentine " one of the first 
things he did was to give Dr. William Goodfellow, 
an American [Methodist] Missionary returning to the 
United States, a commission to send out a number of 
educated women to establish normal schools in Argen- 
tina." ^ In 1884 President Roca of Argentina at a 
Protestant anniversary celebration in Buenos Aires, 
praised the missionaries, saying that to their influence 
he attributed much of the progress of the republic and 
urged them to enlarge their field and increase their 
zeal. Such evidence might be multiplied — from the 
side of the people as well as from their rulers. Much 
of the work of the missions was original and sponta- 
neous, the missionaries being invited by people who 
had already broken from Rome, to come and give 
them further guidance and instruction. There is, of 
course, the most bitter opposition from the Church. 
The " Defensa Catolica," published in Mexico, de- 
clared plainly in 1887, " In the Lord's service and for 
love of Him, we must, if need be, offend men; we 
must if need be, wound and kill them. Such actions 
are virtuous and can be performed in the name of 
Catholic Charity." ^ And where the government is 
under the control of the Church, there is vexatious 
political hindrance of missions.^ Those who say that 
Latin America does not want Protestant missions 
have only this ground for their statement, namely, the 
Roman Church does not want them. That they are 
not regarded by the people as an intrusion is shown by 

1 " Protestant Missions in South America," 109. 

^ Brown, " Latin America," 247. 

' Report of Ecumenical Conference, New York, 1900, Vol. I, 477. 



232 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

the fact that the constitutions of almost all the re- 
publics have been amended, in spite of the opposition 
of the Church, to allow freedom of religion and to 
secure the rights of those who hold and propagate 
other forms of faith than the Roman. 

2. The territory is not already occupied and fully 
covered by the Roman Catholic Church. There are, 
as we have seen, about 5,000,000 Indians in South 
America, of whom about 3,000,000 are Quichua- 
speaking. While claiming them as its children the 
Roman Church in South America is doing almost 
nothing for them. And for many of the other peoples, 
it does next to nothing. If it furnishes them with 
occasional worship and confessional, it yet leaves 
most of them utterly ignorant, providing no adequate 
schools, nor literature, nor vital inspiration. Even 
where it displays itself most, the work of enlighten- 
ment and purification, without which nations cannot 
live, is not done. Protestant schools are crowded 
everywhere and might be multiplied indefinitely, and 
be in large measure or entirely self-supporting. If the 
Roman Church were doing what needs to be done, 
there would be no such educational demand as to-day 
appeals to every Protestant mission. 

3. As we have seen, the South American people 
cannot be left to the sole influence and example of the 
Roman Church as it is in South America. Some fresh 
testimony will confirm the facts which we have already 
faced. " The ceremony of marriage," Mr. Curtis 
wrote of Ecuador, " is not observed to any great ex- 
tent, for the expense of matrimony is too heavy for the 
common people to think of paying it. For this, the 
Catholic Church is responsible, and to it can be traced 
the cause of the illegitimacy of more than half of the 



PROTESTANT MISSIONS 233 

population." ^ Dr. Blackford, who lived for twenty- 
six years in Brazil tells us plainly what he saw there. 

Romanism was inherited by Brazil from the mother-coun- 
try. It has held almost undisputed sway there for over three 
centuries. It is but fair, therefore, to infer that the system 
has brought forth its legitimate fruits in that great and beau- 
tiful land. . . . 

Aside from the fearful corruptions in morals which the 
system everywhere engenders, and which will not bear recital 
here, a few of its dire results may be mentioned, as follows : 
The most debasing ignorance and superstition pervade the 
minds of the masses. The religious sentiment in man, if not 
nurtured and directed by the truths of Divine Revelation, 
will be overrun by the most degrading and ridiculous super- 
stitions. Rome everywhere seeks with jealous care to hide 
the Word of God from, the people. The result intended is 
secured: that abjection of spirit and superstitious faith, which 
engender fanaticism and render the ignorant the ready tools 
of priestcraft. 

On the other hand, the intelligent, educated and thinking 
classes are driven into unbelief and indifference. It is so in 
Brazil. The unlettered classes are grossly superstitious and 
idolatrous. As a general thing, intelligent men who have any 
claim or make any pretensions to education, do not hesitate 
to declare their disbelief in many, if not all, of the doctrines 
of the religion they have been taught. If any such profess 
a full belief in their system, their sincerity is at once ques- 
tioned. This is the natural and inevitable result. ... In such 
cases men, without a knowledge of the truths of the Bible, 
naturally seek refuge in rationalism and infidelity, and not a 
few are driven into absolute atheism. 

Popery has, however, demoralized itself in Brazil. There 
is in general very little attachment to the Romish system as 
such. If the Pope should disappear to-morrow and his place 
should never again be filled, it would make very little differ- 
ence to the great majority of Brazilians, so far as their re- 
ligious belief, sentiments, and practices are concerned. The 
priests are in general, ignorant and immoral, and frequently 
avaricious and exacting, and, as a consequence, are, in most 
* " Capitals of South America," 306. 



234 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

parts, heartily despised. For a number of years past their 
influence has been rapidly waning in the more intelligent com- 
munities and amongst the better classes. . . . 

The fruits of Romanism are seen not only in the moral 
debasement, but in the backward state of mental and social 
culture and of material progress. The superiority of Protest- 
ant nations in these respects does not result from the differ- 
ence of race, but from the difference in their religion; it is 
the effect of the power of the truth of God's Word on the 
intellects and hearts of men, and its consequent bearing and 
influence on their conduct and social institutions. 

Millions of souls in Brazil are in as urgent need of the 
Gospel as are the pagans of China, India, or Africa; and 
are in an extraordinary degree prepared to receive it; yea, 
more, are urgently beseeching that it may be sent to them.^ 

And Mrs. T. S. Pond writes o£ what she saw in her 
life in Colombia: 

In Barranquilla the people are not bigoted as in Bogota and 
other interior towns, but atheism, indifference, and super- 
stition are harder to overcome. I have been asked, " Is not 
the Catholic religion good enough for those people ? '" The 
truth is, they are not acknowledged as Catholics by those 
Catholics who come from Europe and the States. They say, 
" These people are not Catholics." . . . The priests are vile 
men, and known to be so. One who died in Barranquilla, 
some years ago, left bequests to fifty children whom he ac- 
knowledged as his own. Grown men and women, now, they 
go by his name. I have heard of churches in the country 
being used as places for cockfights, in which priests, as well 
as people, delight. The religion of priests and people con- 
sists in shows and ceremonies, and those who take part in 
the processions of Good Friday and Easter are assured of 
forgiveness for all the sins committed during the year, and 
lay up for themselves merit, especially if they can bear some 
weight of the heavy platform on which is carried the image 
of Christ. 

Is such a Church to be left in possession of the re- 
ligious, moral and social interests, yes, and of the in- 

^ " Sketch of the Brazil Mission," 4, 5. 



PROTESTANT MISSIONS 235 

tellectual and political interests also, inseparably as- 
sociated with these, of 40,000,000 of our fellow crea- 
tures? The people who have no religion may answer 
this question affirmatively, but no one will do so who 
knows the human heart or human history. As the 
President of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign 
IMissions, the Rev. George Alexander, D.D., upon 
returning from a visit to Brazil in the summer of 
1903, said in his report to the Board: 

With every disposition to think as favorably as possible 
of the Roman Catholic Church, I am persuaded that the mis- 
sionaries do not exaggerate the baleful influence of that type 
of religion which Rome has given Latin America. Her doc- 
trine and discipline have sapped the foundation of virile char- 
acter, fettered intellect and conscience and utterly failed to 
check immorality and vice. She may even be called the 
patron of vice. She shares with the State, the responsibility 
for a lottery system pervasive, obtrusive and hideously de- 
moralizing. The festals of the Church are in many cases 
wild orgies, and the clergy themselves are so generally de- 
praved that they lead the weak of their flocks in the ways 
of sin and provoke the more intelligent and moral to disbe- 
lieve in the divine origin of Christianity and even in the ex- 
istence of God. This is no libel upon the priesthood, but a 
statement abundantly confirmed by Catholic authorities. 

The priesthood of Brazil is only to a very limited extent 
Brazilian. It is recruited almost exclusively from abroad and 
from the least desirable elements. . . . Most of these recent 
importations are friars from the Philippines or members of 
orders banished from France ; an infusion which does not 
tend to raise the moral tone of the clergy, though some of 
them are men of great capacity. ... At the same time, it is 
true that the immigration of ecclesiastics has touched the 
sensibilities of the people who are morbidly apprehensive of 
foreign influence. . . . 

The usual fruits of such a debased form of Christianity 
are painfully manifest. The intelligence of Brazil is in revolt 
against the Church. Educated men for the most part adopt 
the philosophy of positivism, and those whose spiritual crav- 



236 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

ings will not be satisfied with such a creed eagerly accepted 
the teachings of spiritualism. . . . 

The most influential man in South America in an interview 
which I had with him on the day of my sailing from Rio, 
said, " It is sad, sad to see my people so miserable when they 
might be so happy. Their ills, physical and moral, spring 
from a common source, lack of religion. They call them- 
selves Catholics, but the heathen are scarcely less Christian. 
The progress of the Anglo-Saxon race is due to their religion. 
Our people have left the firm foundation and are trying to 
build their fabric in the air. Two weeks ago, I had a call 
in this office from Julio Maria, a Catholic priest of great 
learning and eloquence, who has been traversing Brazil from 
north to south, preaching and holding conferences. He said 
to me, 'The moral and religious condition of this people is 
unspeakable, almost remediless. I see but a single ray of 
hope and as a Catholic priest I am ashamed to say where I 
see it.' I expect him to tell me, that he finds it in some 
Protestant mission." 



4. Even if the Roman Catholic Church in South 
America were better than it is, Protestant Missions 
engaged in founding Protestant Churches would be 
needed to do for the Roman Church just what the 
Protestant Church does for it in the United States. 
Without the check of powerful evangelicalism round 
about it, the Roman Church tends to become every- 
where just what Dr. Blackford has described. With 
a strong Protestant environment, it is purged of 
grosser superstition and saved from the base conse- 
quences of its own self -development. Already in 
Mexico, the influence of Protestantism begins to be 
felt in counter reforming movements in the Roman 
Church and that will be the course of affairs all over 
Latin America. The Protestant Churches will not ab- 
sorb the Roman Catholic Church. They will in a 
measure purify it. 



PROTESTANT MISSIONS 237 

The Roman Catholic Church in South America 
needs the Protestant missionary movement. There is 
good in that Church in South America. There are 
good men and women in it. In spite of the falsehoods 
and vicious elements in it, there is truth also. That 
the good in it may triumph over the evil, there is need 
of external stimulus and purification. The presence 
of Protestant missions alone will lead the Church into 
a self cleansing and introduce the forces, or support 
whatever inner forces there may already be, which 
may correct and vivify it. There are some who think 
that the South American religious system is simply to 
be swept away, that it cannot be reformed, but there is 
another view open to us, and that is that against what- 
ever odds and with whatever deep cutting excisions 
the good may be strengthened and enabled to eliminate 
the evil. Already Protestant missions have wrought 
great changes. They have altered the ostensible atti- 
tude of the Church toward the Bible. They have been 
among the influences which have secured a very fair 
text-book of Sacred History in the public schools in 
Chile. They have elevated the standard of education 
in the schools conducted by the Roman Catholic 
Church and have greatly stimulated the Church in its 
establishment of schools. " His praiseworthy efforts," 
says the ex-Minister of Justice and Public Instruction 
in the Argentine, Dr. Federico Pinedo, of Mr. Morris, 
the founder of the Argentine Evangelical Schools, 
" have had the virtue of awakening the Catholics, who, 
not to be left behind, have also founded numerous 
schools, so that in every way the most needy children 
are being benefited." They have steadily widened the 
sphere of freedom and hedged in the Church more 
and more to a true Church ideal. To restrain or abate 



238 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

the forces which have done all this is not an act of 
true friendship toward the Roman Catholic Church. 
It is a betrayal of her best interests and her best men 
and women who need all the help that can be sent 
from without to meet the need of South America and 
to purge its chief institution. 

In this view the attitude of Protestant Missions to 
the Roman Catholic Church in South America ought 
to be an attitude of true discrimination and intelligent 
helpfulness and positive service. We should not at- 
tack its doctrine or its priesthood. We must know the 
grounds on which we are in South America, but the 
grounds of our presence there are not to be made the 
substance of our preaching. We are there to preach 
Christ, not to denounce those who do not preach Him. 
We ought not to engage in polemics. The work in 
South America which has really succeeded has not 
used the method of warfare against the South Amer- 
ican system. It has lovingly and patiently carried to 
men a true gospel of forgiveness and salvation. It is 
hard to restrain the converts from attacking evils 
which they know so well and have come so to abhor, 
but all such tactics confuse the issue and entangle our 
religious enterprise with political and intellectual lib- 
eralism, Masonry, free thought, and mere anti-clerical- 
ism, so that we are put in a false position and misrep- 
resent our own mission. We ought also to cultivate 
closer relations and acquaintanceship with priests and 
with Roman Catholics who are ardently devoted to 
their Church. This will be good for us. We shall be 
able to work more intelligently. We can explain our 
own purposes and perhaps foster a more tolerant and 
Christian spirit, and we may find men and women who 
are themselves eager to see the Church what it ought 



PROTESTANT MISSIONS 239 

to be. It is surely not wrong for us to cherish the 
ideal of reform of what is partly good as well as de- 
struction of what is wholly evil. 

The difficulty, however, it must be honestly stated 
is not on this side. The Church does not want to be 
reformed. The South American system is imperious 
and self-satisfied. It views Protestantism as perni- 
cious and intolerable. It proceeds upon the principle 
of absolute exclusivism set forth in the reply of C. 
Cardinal Patrizi, dated at Rome, September 16, 1864, 
to the Roman Catholic Bishops in England as to the 
judgment of the Inquisition on the subject of the 
membership of Catholics in the " Association for the 
Promotion of the Unity of Christendom," made up of 
both Anglicans and Roman Catholics and other 
Christians. 

The principle upon which it rests is one that overthrows 
the Divine Constitution of the Church. For it is pervaded 
by the idea that the true Church of Jesus Christ consists 
partly of the Roman Church spread abroad and propagated 
throughout the world, partly of the Photian Schism and the 
Anglican heresy as having equally with the Roman Church 
one Lord, one faith and one baptism. The Catholic Church 
offers prayers to Almighty God and urges the faithful in 
Christ to pray, that all who have left the holy Roman Church 
out of which is no salvation, may abjure their errors and be 
brought to the true faith and the peace of that Church, nay 
that all men may by God's merciful aid, attain to a knowl- 
edge of the truth. But that the faithful in Christ and that 
ecclesiastics should pray for Christian unity under the direc- 
tion of heretics and, worse still, according to an institution 
stained and infected by heresy in a high degree, can no way 
be tolerated. . . . Catholics who join this Society are giving 
both to Catholics and non-Catholics an occasion of spiritual 
ruin. . . . The most anxious care then is to be exercised, that 
no Catholics may be deluded either by appearance of piety 
or by unsound opinions to join or in any way favor the 



240 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

Society in question or any similar one; that they may not be 
carried away by a delusive yearning for such newfangled 
Christian Unity, into a fall from that perfect unity which 
by a wonderful gift of Divine Grace stands on the firm 
foundation of Peter.^ 

It has been the priests in South America who burned 
the Bibles, the priests who instigated the mobs, the 
priests who have taught that Protestants are teachers 
of unholy doctrines and exiles from the Kingdom of 
Heaven. To quote from Canon Saavedra's official 
South American Catechism : 

Q. Why do you say that the doctrines which the Protest- 
ants teach are not holy? 

A. Because they say that faith alone is sufficient to save 
one, even when there are no good works ; they counsel a per- 
son to sin as much as possible to make salvation the more 
sure; they say that good works are the rather a hindrance to 
entering heaven; they abolish the sacrifice of the mass and 
the sacrament of penance; they put away fasting and the 
mortification of the body, and advise that the legitimate au- 
thority be not obeyed. 

Q. Is it not a false teaching of our religion that outside 
of the Catholic Church there is no salvation? 

A. Nothing is more reasonable than this principle. 

But this attitude of the South American religious 
system only reveals the more clearly its need of the 
presence of the evangelical Church. What the Roman 
Catholic Church is in the United States as compared 
with what it is in South America, the two Churches 
not being recognizable as the same Church, so that 
American Roman Catholics who come down to South 
America, say " This is not my religion at all," shows 
the need in South America of just those influences 

^ Official Roman Catholic translation, quoted in Walsh, " Secret 
History of the Oxford Movement." 



PROTESTANT MISSIONS 241 

which in North America have formed the greatest 
blessing of the Church, a vastly greater blessing than 
her connection with the Papal See. 

5. The Protestant movement is not a mere pros- 
elytism. It is not that at all. It is a powerful edu- 
cational and moral propaganda, teaching freedom 
and purity. It is also a powerful evangelistic agency, 
aiming at the conversion to Christianity of people, 
who, whatever their ecclesiastical relations, are often 
only adherents of a refined heathenism. The pur- 
poses of the missions are not destructive polemics. 
They aim at the spiritualization of the dead religion 
which has cumbered these nations and would keep 
them from light and progress. We would be happy 
if this could be accomplished by general reformation 
within the Church, but failing that, we must strive 
to accomplish it by winning men one by one to a true 
and reasonable and enlightening faith. 

No one knows the South American conditions bet- 
ter or views them with a broader outlook than the 
Rev. J. W. Fleming, D.D., for many years minister 
of the Scotch Presbyterian Church in Buenos Aires, a 
strong church of Scotch and English residents. For 
years this church confined its work to the colonists 
but it has now at last been constrained to take up 
Spanish work also for two reasons. Dr. Fleming 
says: 

In the first place, we have in our hands the priceless mes- 
sage of the Gospel, and without in any way denying the 
true and vital Christianity of numbers of Roman Catholics 
we believe that there are still greater numbers who are in 
ignorance of what real Christianity is. They are not only 
bad Christians, they are bad Roman Catholics. It is alto- 
gether an error to say that we are seeking to proselytize 
these people. When we seek to make them Protestant we 



242 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

are winning them from heathenism or the next thing to it, 
and giving them for the first time in their lives a real knowl- 
edge of Christianity. It is a clear duty to take up such work ; 
we have received the Gift and we are bound to pass it on. 
All the world is to be won for Christ, and surely our first 
duty is to begin with that portion of the world which does 
not know the unsearchable riches of Christ and which at the 
same time lies at our own doors.i 

6. The needs of South American Protestants jus- 
tify the existence of Protestant churches. This is 
the second reason mentioned by Dr. Fleming for the 
inauguration of Spanish work by his church. It pre- 
sents an unanswerable argument for the legitimacy of 
Protestant work in South America. Speaking of the 
nationalized children of the European colonists in 
Argentina, Dr. Fleming remarks: 

It is the fact that every year there is an increasing number 
of young people growing to maturity who are Protestants by 
birth and by conviction and who are often Presbyterians by 
baptism and training, but whose knowledge of the English 
language is very defective, and occasionally is altogether 
wanting. These are our own people and ought to be looked 
after by the Church of which they are made members in 
baptism. At present they are drifting away from worship 
of every kind, whereas if we had a church to which they 
could attach thexnselves, some, at least, would become valu- 
able members of the Church of Christ." ^ 

For a hundred years now English-speaking Protest- 
ant people have been moving into South America. 
Were they to come, Alberdi asked, without the reHg- 
ion that made them what they were? By no means. 
They brought their religion with them and that relig- 
ion once brought, by its very nature propagated itself. 

^Buenos Aires Scotch Church Magazine, March, 1903, i. 
2 Ibid. 



PROTESTANT MISSIONS 243 

The first Protestant preachers were not so much mis- 
sionaries to South Americans as they were pastors 
of the immigrants and colonists and foreign com- 
munities, but their influence soon and inevitably spread 
beyond those of their own race and became an appeal 
and inspiration to those who had never been touched 
and affected by such character. 

A typical man of this class was David Trumbull 
of Valparaiso, the pioneer missionary in Chile, whose 
name is still gratefully revered, and who deserves to 
be ever remembered for his service in securing a liber- 
alization of the laws of Chile, in promoting a wider 
range of thought and sympathy, in uplifting the tone 
of a foreign community in a commercial city, and 
in embodying high ideals of noble and companionable 
character. In all South America we found no for- 
eign community more happily interrelated or better 
maintaining home ideals and religious institutions than 
the foreign community in Valparaiso. Many causes 
have doubtless operated to produce this, notably the 
work of Dr. Trumbull's successors and the high and 
Christian tone of certain prominent business houses, 
but doubtless also. Dr. Trumbull's influence is seen 
in this. For more than forty years he ministered 
to the English-speaking people of Valparaiso, at the 
same time that he made the well being of Chile his 
one great care. When the struggle for the passage of 
laws providing for civil marriage and religious free- 
dom and other reforms was at its height, a struggle 
in which he was the central figure, he vowed that if 
the measures passed, out of gratitude and confidence 
he would become a citizen of the land to which he 
had given his life. And he fulfilled his vow. The 
high United States official who once spoke of him as 



244 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

a " renegade American " was not informed as to the 
man or his work. They are suitably described in the 
inscription on the great stone over his grave in the 
foreign cemetery at Valparaiso, a cemetery in which 
there rest also the bodies of Dr. Allis, another of the 
most faithful missionaries, and of some of the little 
children who, in simplicity, have shared the fortunes 
of conditions which they could neither choose nor 
refuse. 

MEMORIAE SACRUM 

The Reverend 
David Trumbull, D. D. 

Founder and Minister of the Union Church, Valparaiso. 

Born in Elizabeth, N. J., ist of Nov., 1819. 

Died in Valparaiso, ist of Feb., 1899. 

For forty-three years he gave himself to unwearied and 
successful effort in the cause of evangelical truth and relig- 
ious liberty in this country. As a gifted and faithful minister 
and as a friend he was honored and loved by foreign resi- 
dents on this coast. In his public life he was the counsellor 
of statesmen, the supporter of every good enterprise, the 
helper of the poor, and the consoler of the afflicted. 

In memory of 
His eminent services, fidelity, charity and sympathy 

This monument 

Has been raised by his friends in this community 

And by citizens of his adopted country. 

All over South America, where the English and Ger- 
man-speaking people have come to settle or carry on 
business, they have their own Protestant services. 
And such services must be maintained for the moral 
life of these people and their children. It would be 
wrong not to have them, but it is impossible to have 
them without releasing influences which are subver- 
sive of the old South American religious system. 



PROTESTANT MISSIONS 245 

7. The Latin American states need the type of 
character which only a strong evangelical religion can 
produce. " Owing to the lamentable want of public 
morality south of the equator, and to the cynicism of 
the political vultures who make it their business to 
prey upon their fatherland," says Mr. Child, " it is 
always a painful task to speak about the adminstra- 
tion of the South American Republics." ^ 

Elsewhere Mr. Child fulfills this painful task. 

The whole apparatus of republicanism in these countries 
is a farce, and in spite of the sonorous speeches of after- 
dinner orators they have not yet begun to enjoy even the 
most elementary political liberty. A brief glance at the past 
history of the South American Republics will explain why 
this is so. For convenience' sake we will take the Argentine 
as an example, the history of the others being in all essential 
points analogous and parallel. After the separation from 
Spain in 1810, the Argentines, prepared by three centuries of 
Spanish domination to look to their rulers for everything, and 
to dispense with initiative of all kinds in the organization 
and administration of their national and economical life, 
were at a loss what use to make of their newly-acquired 
liberty. They were free citizens, but they did not know 
what citizenship means. They had vague ideas of their 
rights, but no idea of their duties — a condition, by the way, 
in which they have remained to the present day, therein re- 
sembling very closely the French, who have spent a whole 
century in learning that citizens of a republic have duties 
as well as rights, and that the citizen who values his rights 
and desires to retain them intact must give himself the pains 
to be continuously and zealously an active voting citizen. 
However, from 1800 onward the Argentines passed through 
a long period of revolutions until 1852, when the nation 
seemed at length to have achieved pacific possession of its 
destinies ; but being still without the practical and self-reliant 
spirit of democracy, it sought support as an example for a 

1 Child, "South American Republics," 435; Carpenter, "South Amer- 
ica," 368. 



246 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

future history in the past experience of the United States. 
Thus the text of the American Constitution and its federative 
doctrines were adopted, and the political heroes and juriscon- 
sults of the United States acquired new admirers and new 
disciples south of the equator. The modern Argentine Re- 
public found its salvation in imitation, but the salvation has 
not been complete, because the imitation of North American 
institutions has been in the letter rather than in the spirit. 
. . . The Argentines have eliminated virtue from their de- 
mocracy; they have forgotten that they ever had souls; and 
yet they talk of their greatness and revel in prodigious sta- 
tistics. But in what does a nation's greatness consist? To 
quote the words of James Anthony Froude, in his " Oceana " : 
" Whether (a nation) be great or little depends entirely on 
the sort of men and women that it is producing. A sound 
nation is a nation that is composed of sound human beings, 
healthy in body, strong of limb, true in word and deed — 
brave, sober, temperate, chaste, to whom morals are of more 
importance than wealth or knowledge — where duty is first and 
the rights of man are second — where, in short, men grow up 
and live and work, having in them what our ancestors called 
the fear of God." ^ 

This is a far severer indictment than we would 
draw. We take a much more hopeful and favorable 
view, but Mr. Child describes South America's great- 
est need. And that fear of God Romanism has not 
supplied in all these centuries of domination. It has 
given South America neither the religion, the ethics, 
nor the politics of the New Testament. 

Sometimes it is said that South America is back- 
ward and politically dilapidated because of the char- 
acter of the people, not because of their religion. 
Dr. Lane, of Brazil, has answered this view: 

Much has been written about the decHne of the Latin races, 
as if certain races were doomed because of their ancestors. 
It would be a monstrous thing, from a Christian standpoint, 

1 Child, " The Spanish American Republics," 329. 



PROTESTANT MISSIONS 247 

if a nation or an individual must fall behind in the race of 
life under the fatal influence of the blood in their veins. We 
do not believe it, but agree with Emil de Lavelye, who wrote 
on the subject some twenty-five years ago, that it is rather 
a question of religion than of race. Centuries of wrong 
thinking — acting from wrong motives, the effects of vicious 
education or no education, will make the people of any race 
weak; but there is an education based upon the principle of 
a pure Christianity which will make the people of any race 
strong; the power of Truth in God's word, on the intellects 
and hearts of men, will regenerate a nation as surely as it 
will an individual, purify its politics and straighten out its 
finances.! 

Latin America has made in some parts of it real 
progress since Mr. Child wrote the words quoted, but 
the need of character and principle is as great as 
ever in the face of the new and acute problems of 
the present day. The responsibility for helping Latin 
America to meet this need rests upon us, the nearest 
neighbor. We have assumed toward the American 
Republics an attitude of political responsibility which, 
however acceptable it was to them once, has become 
a little irritating to them now. They are afraid now 
of growing American predominance and are fearful 
lest American oversight should work to their humili- 
ation and dependence. The only safe and certain 
way to disarm such fears and to win their confidence 
and to help them in their problem is to establish a 
closer relationship in religious convictions and moral 
principles. There is no adequate reformatory agency 
save Christianity, and there is no cement of personal 
or national intercourse comparable with common re- 
ligious sentiments and beliefs and hopes. We owe 
it not less to the common destiny of this Western 

1 The Brazilian Bulletin, Vol. I, No. i, 4. 



248 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

Hemisphere that we should share with these people 
the real Christian inheritance to which so many of 
them are strangers, than we owe it to them as nations 
and as men. Foreign missions are the main channel 
through which that inheritance is to be given. 

Let us hear this last consideration in the words 
of the Anglican Bishop of Argentina, whose seat is 
in Buenos Aires and whose work lays on him the 
burden of South America's real need: 

" The Needs of South America," how great and pathetic 
they are! The world's empty continent — the hope of the 
future — the home to be of millions of Europeans, who are 
already beginning to flow there in a steady stream — it is 
without true reHgion, and does not realize its danger! The 
form of the faith prevalent is the weakest and most corrupt 
known, and it is impossible to believe that the rising young 
nationalities of the continent can long be content with it. 
Indeed they are not content with it now. Yet a faith they 
must have. What hope is there for Argentina, for example, 
that Spanish-speaking United States of the future, without 
true reHgion? Of what use are vast material resources, rapid 
development, wealth, knowledge, power, without that? 
Surely God has a place in the world for these brilliant 
Southern races. They are still full of vitality. We have no 
right to speak of them as effete and played out, especially 
when we know the marvelous recuperative power of the 
human race. Well, where should this place of development 
be but in the free air and temperate climate and wide spaces 
of the new world, far from the social tyrannies and relig- 
ious superstitions which have hitherto retarded their proper 
growth? It is nothing less than axiomatic that South Amer- 
ica needs true religion, if its future history is not to be a 
disappointment and its development a failure. . . . 

South America needs what Christian England, if the 
Church were but moved with more faith and love, could 
easily give — true religion, viz., Reformed, Scriptural, Apos- 
tolic Christianity. Our own people need it, that they may 
be saved from only too possible degradation. The Spanish 
and Portuguese-speaking people need it, that they may de- 



PROTESTANT MISSIONS 249 

velop into the strong free nations they desire to be. The 
aboriginal races of Indians need it, that they may be saved 
from extinction and find their place, too, in the kingdom of 
God. 

If missionary work is not warranted and demanded 
in conditions like these, where is it legitimate ? 

II. But if our missions in Latin America are justi- 
fied and necessary, can they be conducted without en- 
countering the antagonism of the Roman Catholic 
Church in Latin America and in the United States? 

Well, as a matter of fact, they do not escape and 
never have escaped this antagonism, no matter what 
the care and spirit with which they have been con- 
ducted. One could quote criticisms by Roman Cath- 
olics of the American Episcopal Missions in Brazil 
and the Philippines, although in the latter the Mission 
has sought carefully to protect itself from the suspic- 
ion of proselytizing among the Roman Catholic Fil- 
ipinos. And we all know how the Protestant mis- 
sions in all parts of Latin America have been assailed 
by the Roman Church and how the organs of the 
Church in the United States have dealt with any who 
have dared to state the facts regarding Latin Ameri- 
can conditions. Now is all this inevitable? 

History helps us to answer this question. There 
was a time when in the Philippines and in all Latin 
America there was no religious liberty, no free speech, 
no public education, no civil marriage, no burial rites 
or interment in a cemetery for a Protestant, no valid 
baptism for Protestant children and consequently in 
some lands no right of inheritance. These intoler- 
able conditions have passed away. Did they pass 
away without the antagonism of the Roman Catholic 



250 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

Church? It fought every one of these reforms. It 
is fighting some of them still. Not one advance has 
been made toward free institutions and free educa- 
tion and freedom of opinion and speech and religion 
in Latin America without encountering relentless 
opposition from the Roman organization. If every 
step thus far toward the emancipation and enlighten- 
ment of South America has been antagonized by the 
Roman Catholic Church, we must not be surprised or 
intimidated if we continue to meet with opposition. 

For let us candidly and fearlessly face the real 
facts. It is very well to seek to justify some of our 
work in South America by pointing out the atheism 
and unbelief which need to be dealt with and also 
the great aboriginal population which is to be reached, 
but neither of these considerations will save us from 
the opposition of the Roman Catholic Church, for, 
however unwarrantedly, the Roman Catholic Church 
in South America claims almost all the accessible 
Indian population, so that our work among them is 
resented by the Roman Church as much as work for 
the rest of the population, and, curious as the fact 
may appear, the atheism and unbelief and immorality 
of South America are all nominally Roman Catholic. 
In no South American country have the men of the 
land more completely thrown off religion than in the 
Argentine, and yet nominally these men are Roman 
Catholics and the constitution of the Argentine re- 
quires that the President of the Republic shall be a 
Roman Catholic. In Chile, as we have seen, where 
a third of the births are illegitimate and 60 per cent 
of the population is illiterate, the government census 
gives 98 per cent of the population as Roman Catho- 
lics, while in Brazil, where the government census 



PROTESTANT MISSIONS 25I 

of 1890 gave a percentage of illegitimacy of 18 per 
cent and of illiteracy of 80 per cent, the official re- 
turns gave 99 per cent of the people as Roman Catho- 
lics. In other words, by the declaration of the official 
census in Brazil and Chile, practically all the illegit- 
imacy and illiteracy is Roman Catholic illegitimacy 
and illiteracy. You cannot do anything for the people 
of Brazil or Chile that is not on the face of it work 
for Roman Catholics. We do not believe that that 
fact puts them beyond the pale of enlightenment and 
makes any effort to relieve them unwarrantable, but 
the simple fact cannot be escaped that whatever mis- 
sions are operated in these lands or indeed in any 
Latin American lands are operated among nominal 
Roman Catholics; for the Roman Catholic Church 
claims them all as its own. 

And the situation is not relieved by that view of 
our mission work in these lands which would acquit 
it of all responsibility for establishing evangelical 
churches and would be satisfied to conduct it simply 
as a moral and educational influence, seeking by its 
example to awaken the Roman Catholic Church to 
better standards and a purer life. The Roman Cath- 
olic Church approves of such Protestant missions no 
more than of the other kind. It has opposed such 
work as earnestly as it has fought the evangelistic ef- 
fort. In the Argentine House of Deputies it assailed, 
through one of its bishops, Mr. Morris's schools, and 
in Brazil, American Catholics have lamented the work 
even of Protestant institutions which, although in this 
they were in error, they declared had no evangelistic 
purpose or influence.^ 

As a matter of fact our missions are welcomed 

1 The American Catholic Quarterly Review, July, 1910, 478. 



252 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

in every Latin American land, but not by the Roman 
Catholic Church. Both in South America and here 
that Church steadfastly resents and opposes every 
such effort. We may lament this. We may believe 
that it is the height of folly for the Roman Catholic 
Church in the United States and Canada to seek to 
deny or cloak the indisputable facts regarding Latin 
America. But the cold truth is that we cannot carry 
on any Protestant work of any sort whatever in Latin 
America without encountering the opposition of the 
Roman Catholic Church both there and here. 

III. If, then, this opposition is unavoidable, what 
course are we to pursue? i. We are to do our duty. 
It is our duty to minister to human need. We are to 
maintain our missions in Latin America and to seek 
to evangeHze the people of Latin America with the 
Christian Gospel just as we seek to evangelize the 
Japanese Buddhist sects whose doctrines and rites are 
scarcely less Christian than those of many of the peo- 
ple in Latin America. 

2. We are to seek to build up evangelical 
churches in Latin America and to receive into these 
churches converted men and women, whether these 
men and women have been nominal Roman Catholics 
and actual atheists and unbelievers, or whether they 
have been open repudiators of all religion, or whether, 
as will usually be the case, they are men and women 
who have sought for moral and spiritual satisfaction 
in the Roman Catholic Church as it is in South Amer- 
ica and have been disappointed. Most of the earnest 
members of the evangelical churches in Latin Amer- 
ica have been devout Roman Catholics, who were dis- 
contented with their vain search for life and peace. 



PROTESTANT MISSIONS 253 

If it is said that this is proselytism, our reply is that we 
abhor proselytism as much as any one, when that pros- 
elytism is the effort to win a man from one form of 
Christian faith to another, but the Latin American 
form of Christianity is so inadequate and misrepresen- 
tative that to preach the truth to it is not proselytism, 
but the Christian duty of North American Christians, 
both Protestant and Catholic. 

3. We are to pursue in all this work the most 
irenic course. We are not to attack the Roman Catho- 
lic Church. That is not good policy and it is not good 
principle, and it is to many of us practically impossi- 
ble. We grew up here with many friends in the Ro- 
man Catholic Church and we have many friends in it 
now. We believe that here and even in Latin Amer- 
ica it holds some great fundamental Christian truths. 
We respect the piety and consecration of many of its 
men and women. We are appalled at the mass of evil 
which has overcrusted it in Latin America, but even 
so we cannot wage a war against it. Our purpose and 
desire are to preach Christ and to set forth the posi- 
tive truth in love. This course will result in the de- 
struction of error. Even this course will be opposed 
by the Latin American Church, but nevertheless in 
spite of such opposition, in spite of the insults and 
slander by which all who try to show the actual con- 
ditions in Latin America will be assailed in the United 
States, we must not be provoked into unkindness or 
injustice toward that which is good and true in the 
Roman Catholic Church, both among its people and 
among its leaders. 

4. We must be patient and hopeful. If we have 
the truth it will prevail. And all the forces of human 
progress are with us. Indeed, there are some entirely 



254 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

too free and radical forces awaking within the Roman 
Catholic Church and among the Latin American peo- 
ple. We must beware of sympathy with anti-clerical 
movements which rest on principles which are anti- 
religious, and with tendencies of thought which not 
only destroy tradition but by the same token dissolve 
history. We have no easy path. The true path is 
never easy in the midst of conflicting extremes. To 
be a rank partisan is far simpler than to extricate 
truth from error in antagonistic views and travel on 
even ways. 

5. We must recognize sympathetically the prob- 
lem with which the Roman Catholic Church has to 
deal. It is stupendous. One's heart goes out to the 
earnest men who have to bear this burden. It remains 
to be seen whether the capacity of adjustment to new 
and unavoidable conditions and to truth is in the 
Church, or whether it is incapable of being reformed. 
There are many who assert that it is. We venture to 
believe otherwise, regarding large sections of it at 
least, though in other large sections a work of destruc- 
tion and regeneration must be done as radical almost 
as any needed in heathenism. 

IV. And now, lastly, if we are to go forward, in 
this spirit of good will and friendliness, with un- 
daunted determination; how are we to get for these 
missions adequate interest and support at home? 

Those who are now interested in such missions are 
interested, as a rule, from ultra-Protestant and mili- 
tant anti-Papal convictions, and their argument for 
missions in Latin America would involve as an in- 
evitable corollary a great propaganda in the United 
States and Canada against the Roman Catholic 



PROTESTANT MISSIONS 255 

Church. I do not believe we ought to take up the 
matter in this way. It is true that the Roman CathoHc 
Church in the United States makes it very difficult to 
take it up in any other way. It insists that the Roman 
Catholic Church is one in all lands and in all ages, and 
that to state what we know to be the facts about Latin 
America is to libel and attack the Roman Catholic 
Church in the United States and Canada. This is a 
terrible responsibility to assume, and one longs for 
the day when the Roman Catholic Church in our land 
will be as bold as Cardinal Vaughan and Father Sher- 
man and many another ecclesiastic has been, and de- 
nounce and renounce the evils and abuses which flour- 
ish under the name of the Roman Catholic Church in 
all Latin America. And we must anticipate this day 
and be wise enough and generous enough not to allow 
the American and Canadian Roman Catholics to 
shoulder the shame of Latin America in blind denial 
of indisputable facts. 

Our propaganda must be carried on on the basis of 
these facts — namely, the conditions of need in Latin 
America which unanswerable evidence can establish. 

I. First of all we must set forth these conditions 
and prove them by evidence which cannot be gainsaid. 
Whenever evidence creeps into our presentation 
which can be gainsaid or disputed, we are in danger 
of damaging the case which must be made. Such 
faulty evidence cannot invalidate the sound evidence, 
but it diverts attention and it compromises the argu- 
ment. It is no easy matter to be faultless here when 
we review all the testimony which is current. But 
we must take pains to be absolutely accurate, and then 
we must speak out unflinchingly the facts which de- 
mand attention and which dare not be obscured. 



256 SOUTH AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

2. We must challenge the conscience of Great 
Britain and America. The South American Journal 
states that Great Britain has £555,142,041 capital in- 
vested in South America, and that her dividends from 
this investment in 1909 were £25,437,030. That is 
more each month than the total expenditure on evan- 
gelical missions in South America in a hundred years. 
In the face of such a statement as that quoted from 
the Bishop of Argentina, can a nation con- 
scientiously do such a thing as this, draw a stream 
of national wealth from these lands and contribute to 
them no moral or spiritual treasure, or next to none? 

3. We must temperately but firmly dispute the 
position, that the whole Church is facing the whole 
world task, or is entitled to claim the divine resources 
available for a world enterprise alone, if it excludes 
from its view the need and appeal of Latin America, 
or fails to offer all the help which Christian sympathy 
and service can give to the warm-hearted, generous 
people wrestling with great problems beneath the stars 
of the far Southern skies. 



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INDEX 



Acton, Lord, 125. 

Africa, 33- 

African, element in Brazil, 43. 

Africans, imported, 8. 

Agriculture, 20, 37. 

Akers, quoted, 45. 

Alberdi, quoted, 129. 

Alcoholism, 45, 207. 

Alexander, Rev. George, quoted, 235, 
236. 

Almagro, 10, 13, 194. 

Alvares, Diego, 16. 

Amazon, 7, 54, 215. 

American and Foreign Christian 
Union, 220. 

American Bible Society, 151, 152, 215. 

American Protestant Episcopal Mis- 
sion, 184, 221. 

Anchieta, 119. 

Andalusians, 7, 15. 

Andes, 10, 35. 52, 54; Bolivar crosses, 
28; San Martin crosses, 27. 

Anglican Bishop, of Argentina, 
quoted, 248. 

Antofagasta, 44, 51. 

Araucanians, 6, 7, 44, 201, 202, 210, 
216. 

Areas, comparisons of various repub- 
Ucs with other countries, 33-35- 

Arequipa, 96, 144, 184, 211. 

Argentina, 4, 14, 20, 28, 36, 50, 52, 
72, 77, 84, 94, 127, 129; capital, 72; 
Church in, 138, 177, 184, 189, 191, 
250; education, 85, 88, 106, 108, 
109; effects of conquest, 19; govern- 
ment, 31, 24s; growth, 38; immi- 
gration, 40, 71. 128; independence, 
25, 27; Indians, 198, 203, 215; mis- 
sions in, 218, 221, 223, 231, 242, 



251; resources, 36, 37; settled, 10; 

size, 34; taxation, 68; trade, 48, 49. 
Argentine EvangeUcal Schools, 177, 

223,224, 237. 
Argentine National Congress, 224. 
Armenians, 227, 228^ 
Asuncion, 11, 66, 104. 
Asiatics, 53. 
Audiencia, of Lima, 13. 
Ayacucho, great battle, 28. 
Aymaras, 7, 117, 207, 208, 209, 210, 

215. 

Aztecs, 6, 210. 

Backwardness, causes of, 72-81; of 
South American republics, 55-64. 

Bahia, 7, 8, 12, 16, 18, 44, 66, 73, 152, 
218. 

Balboa, 9. 

Bahnaceda, 82. 

Barbosa, Ruy, 178. 

Barranquilla, 77. 170, 234. 

Barrett, Hon. John, quoted, 69. 

Basques, 7, 15. 

Belgium, 64, 77. 

Benalcazar, 10. 

Bemado, Bishop, quoted, 62. 

Bibles, 62, 136, 151, 152, 153, 218, 
219, 237, 240. 

Bingham, Professor, quoted, 208-210. 

Blackford, Dr., quoted, 233, 236. 

Bogota, 9. 25, 52, 59, 60, 61, 62, 66, 
77, 100, 218, 222; Archbishop of, 
quoted, 152. 

BoUvar, 23, 24, 26, 27, 28, 75, 128, 194. 

Bolivia, 3, 13, 14, 19, 51, 142, 198; 
backwardness, 55, 70; conquest of, 
10, 19; education, 103, 107, 108, 
no; illegitimacy, 77; immigration, 



263 



264 



INDEX 



71; independence, 28; Indians, 203, 
206, 210, 2IS; Inquisition, 132; 
Jesuits, 119; missions in, 220, 223; 
religious liberty, 134; resources, 
53; size, 34- 

Bororos, 204. 

Boyaca, 213; victory, 26. 

Brazil, 35, 36, 46, so, 52, 72, 85, 113. 
IIS, 176, 178, 179, 184, 222, 246; 
area and population, 39 ; attitude of 
Church, isi; character and lan- 
guage, 39-41; climate, 73; dis- 
covery, 8; early civilization, 7; 
education, 91-94, 106, 108; effects of 
conquest, 18, 19; government, 31; 
illegitimacy, 76; immigration, 41, 
128; immorality, 77; Indians, 202, 
203, 2 is; industry and resources, 
40, 41; Jesuits in, 16, 118, 121, 196; 
missions in, 217, 218, 220, 221, 223, 
224, 225, 250, 2Si; occupation by 
Portuguese, 12; religious census, 
141; religious conditions, 185-187, 

190, 221, 233, 235; religious lib- 
erty, 132, 139; size, 34; struggles 
for independence, 28, 29; taxation, 
68; trade, 48, 49. Si- 
Brazilians, character of, 74. 
Brazil-wood, 7. 

British and Foreign Bible Society, 222. 

Browning, Dr. Webster E., quoted, 
166-167. 

Buenos Aires, 14, 20, 28, 31, 66, 67, 
143. IS7. 180, 218; city problems, 
37; education, 83, 85, 87, 88; in- 
dependence, 24; missions in, 218, 
222, 223, 231, 248; religion in, 188, 

191, 192; taxes, 68. 

Bunge, Prof. Carlos O., quoted, 83. 

Cabral, Pedro Alvarez, 7, 16. 

Cadiz, 20, 24. 

Callao, 20. 

Cambao, 57. 

Cambridge Modem History, quoted, 

30, 121, 125. 
Canada, 36. 



Cannibals, 207. 

Capital, 41, 42; British, 36; Foreign, 
72. 

Carabobo, victory of, 27. 

Caracas, 24, 25, 26, 66, 102. 

Caras, 5, 6. 

Cartagena, 52, 63, 122. 

Castilla del Oro, 9. 

Castro, Juan Bautista, quoted, 160. 

Catalonian, racial graft, 7. 

Catholic Dictionary, quoted, 175. 

Cattle, 37. 

Cereals, 37. 

Cerro de Pasco, copper smelter, 226. 

Chaco, 198. 

Charcas, 14. 

Charles III., 22. 

Chibchas, 9. 

Child, Mr., quoted, 245, 246. 

Children, 45, so, 72, 78, 106, 108, 114, 
122, 128, 156. 

Chile, 4, 13, 14, 36, 45, SL 52, 72, 82, 
84, 100, 153, 155; alcoholism, 45; 
Church in, 116; clergy, 163, 165, 192; 
climate and resources, 43, 44, 72; 
conquest of, 10, 19; contrast with 
Brazil, 43; early peoples, 6; educa- 
tion, 88-91, 104-106; government, 
31; hygiene, 45; illegitimacy, 77, 
250; immigration, 71 ; independence, 
25, 27; Indians, 201, 202; missions 
in, 218, 220, 223, 226, 243; religious 
liberty, 133; size, 34; taxation, 68; 
trade, 49. 

Chilean tribes, 10. 

China, 34, 36, 49, 69. 

Chuquisaca, 103. 

Cities, 65-67; great cities, 66; govern- 
ment, 67; problems, 37, 38. 

Clericals, 128. 

Climate, 34, 36, 43, 44; effect of, 72, 73. 

Coan, Titus, 201. 

Cochabamba, 103. 

Cochrane, Lord, naval expedition of, 
27. 

Colombia, 4, 14, 19, 22, 28, 35, 53, 
134. 15s; backwardness, 55-61; 



INDEX 



265 



Church in, 61, 147, 176; climate, 
73; education, 98-101; illegitimacy, 
77; independence, 25, 27; Indians, 
213, 215; Inquisition, 122; missions 
in, 218, 222, 223, 234; poUticians, 
60; religious liberty, 35, 137; re- 
soxirces, SS; size, 34; trade, 48, 
women, 59- 

Colon, railroad, 65. 

Colonial, education, 83, 84; govern- 
ment, 19. 

Columbus, 8, 9. II3- 

Concepcion, 44. 

Confessional, 146, is6. 

Conquistadores, 7. 

Constituent Congress of United Prov- 
inces, manifesto quoted, 20, 23. 

Cordova, 10, 83. 87. 

Cortes, 114. 210. 

Creoles, 125, 126. 

Crucifixes, 169. 

Currency, 47, 176. 

Currier, Father Charles W., quoted, 
116, 117. 123. 186, 190-194- 

Curtis, W. E., quoted, 13S, 232. 

Cuzco, 14, 27, 95, 96, 116. 

Darien, 9. 213; bishopric, 114. 

Darwin, quoted, 38, 73i 201; on mis- 
sions, 219. 

Davila, 9. 

Dawson, Hon. Thomas C, quoted, 
18, 30, 117, 118, 124; referred to, 17. 

Decoud, Dr. Jose, quoted, 199. 

Defensa CatoUca, 231. 

Deharb^, ]os6, quoted, I73- 

de Solis, Juan Diaz, 11. 

Diego da Nicuera, 9. 

Discoverers, 7. 

Doctrina Cristiana, 117. 

Dom Pedro, I., 13, 28; II., 29. 

Dutch, 12, 217. 

Early peoples, 3-7- 

Ecuador, 13, 14, S3. 61, 142; back- 
wardness, 55. 56; Church in, 117, 
118, 135, 179; climate, 73; con- 



quest, 10, 19; early peoples, s; edu- 
cation, loi, no; illegitimacy, 76; 
independence, 28; Indians, 214, 
215; missions, 223; size, 35; trade, 
48. 

Education, 14; attitude of Church, 61, 
147 ; Argentina, 85-88; Bolivia, 103; 
Brazil, 91-93; Chile, 88-91; Colom- 
bia, 98-101; in colonial period, 83, 
84; Ecuador, loi; equipment of re- 
pubUcs, 84-104; need of, 31; of 
women, 106; Paraguay, 104; Peru, 
95-98; problem of, 82-112; strength 
and weakness, 104-112; Uruguay, 
94; Venezuela, 102. 

El Chileno, quoted, 151. 

Elliott, quoted, 44. 

El Mercurio, quoted, 151, 162, 163, 
i6s. 

Encisco, 9- 

Encyclical, of Pope, 131. 

English Baptist Missionary Society, 
report quoted, 204-206. 

Europeans, influence of, 71. 

Explorers, 7-1 1. 

Exports and Imports, 36, 41, 48, 49, 
50, 53. 55. 56, 58, 64. 

Facatativa, road, 57, 

Farabee, Dr. W. C, quoted, 203, 211. 

Ferdinand, missionary motives of, 
113. 

Ferdinand VII., deposed, 24; restora- 
tion of, 25, 26. 

Feudal system, 10, 15. 

Fleming, Rev. J. W., quoted, 241, 242. 

Fletcher. Rev. J. C, 220. 

Florianopolis, 176. 

French, 12, 19, 71; influence of French 
Revolution, 23. 

Franciscans, 14, 115, 116, 118, 126, 
152, 179. 

Fray Bentos, 47. 

Froude, James A., quoted, 246. 

Galicians, 7, 15. 

Galvao, Senor, quoted, 93. 



266 



INDEX 



Gammon, S. R., quoted, 163. 

Gardiner, Captain Allen, 201; mis- 
sion of, 219, 220. 

Garland, quoted, QSf 98. 

Geneva, sends missionaries to Brazil, 
217. 

Germans, in Brazil, 40, 7ii 72; trade 
by, 41. 

Giesecke, quoted, 95- 

"Glories of Mary," quoted, 171. 

Gonzalo, 10. 

Goodfellow, Dr. William, 85, 231. 

Government, 13, iSi I9. 22, 30, 31, 32, 
63; in cities, 66. 

Governors, 11-19. 

Gran Chaco, 4. 

Great Britain, mediation refused, 25, 
trade, 41; capital, 72. 

Guayaquil, 56, 67, loi; meeting place 
of San Martin and Bolivar, 27. 

Hale, quoted, 40. 75- 

Hall, Captain Basil, quoted, 21. 

Hernando, 10. 

Honda, beggars, 59; highway, 57. 

Hospital, Bogota, scenes in, 59; Rio, 

support of, 133. 
Humboldt, 19. 

Illiteracy, 84, 108, 109; compared 
with that in America, 108-111. 

Immigration, 13, I9. 36, 38, 40, 43; 
influence on trade and prosperity in 
various republics, 70-72; religious 
liberty, 128. 

Incas, 10, 18, 117; civilization, 4-6. 

Independence, steps toward, 24-29. 

Indians, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 16, 40, 45, 
47. 52, 53, 55, 58, 72, 98, 116, 121, 
124, 232; conversion of, 113, 116; 
difficulties with, 66; in various 
states, 196-216; sufferings under 
Latin Conquest, 17, 19. 

Industries, 21, 42. 

Inquisition, 14, 63, 117, 122, 123, 132, 
142. 

International Bureau of American 
Republics, quoted, 63, 98, loi, 102. 



Iquique, 44. 
Iquitos, 204. 
Isaacson, quoted, 185. 
Italians, 36, 40, 47, 65, 71. 
Itatiaya, Mt., 73. 

Japan, 34, 36, 49, 64, 70, 108; educa- 
tion compared with that of South 
America, iii, 112. 

Jesuits, II, 12, 14, 16, 83, 87, IIS, 
119, 124, 125, 126, 130, 190, 196, 
203, 206; history of the order in 
South America, 1 18-122. 

John, Prince Regent of Portugal, 12. 

Junta, of Caracas, 24. 

Kalley, Dr. Robert R., 220. 

La Lei, 164, 166. 

Lane, Dr., 92; quoted, 246. 

La Paz, 52, 53, 66, 103, 149, 184, 207. 

Las Andes, 102. 

Las Casas, 114, 115; quoted, 18. 

La Serna, defeated, 28. 

Latin American, inheritance, 17; 
sympathies, 23. 

Latin, advantages and disadvantages 
of Latin Conquest, 17-19; effect of 
Conquest on Indians, 197; feudal- 
ism, 32; races, 7. 

Law, 91. 92. 

Lea, quoted, 159. 

Leo XIII., 186, 187; alleged letter on 
priesthood, 165. 

Liberators, 19-29- 

Liberty, devotion to, 32. 

Liebig Company, 47. 

Liguori, Cardinal, 156. 

Liguori, St. Alphonsus, quoted, 171. 

Lima, 14, 27, 66, 96, 97, 116, 122, 170, 
194; Audiencia of, 13. 

London Times, quoted, 197, 216. 

Lopez, rule of, 50. 

Mackenzie College, 92, 224, 225. 
Magdalena, 57, 213. 
Magellan, 43. 



INDEX 



267 



Magellanes, 43. 44. 201. 

Maria, Jvdio, quoted, 236. 

Maipo, victory, 27. 

Mariolatry, 170, I74- 

Marriage, 16, 58. 74. 79. 128, 138, 

139. 146, IS9. 187. 188, 232. 
Martin de Souza, 8, I94- 
Martin, quoted, 140. 
Martyn, Henry, in Bahia, 218. 
Mat^, 41, so, SI- 
Maximilian, manifesto, 130. 
Mazo, Jos^ Garcia, quoted, 172. 
Medical provision, lack of, 59' 
Mendoza, 11. 
Mestizos, 207. 
Methodist Episcopal Church, South, 

221. 
Methodist Episcopal Mission, 220, 

221, 222. 
Mexico, 3. 6, 7. 22, 25, 31. 36, 48, 

130. 
Minas Geraes, 91, 92. 
Mineral, wealth, 35. 43- 
Mines, 18, 20, 44; Potosi, S3. 57- 
Miranda, 26. 
Mollendo, 51. 
Monteverde, Professor, quoted, 143, 

144. 
Montevideo,46, 47, 66.82,94.139.218. 
Moral conditions, 58, 73-8 1, 145, 146, 

153-162, 163, 183, 247, 248. 
Moravian missions, 217. 
Morris, Rev. William C, 177. 223, 

237. 251. 

Napoleon, 12; influence on Spanish 

colonies, 23. 
Negroes, 40, 72, 84, 98; in Brazil and 

Venezuela, 40. 
Nestorians, reasons for missions to, 

227, 228. 
New Granada, 13, 14, 27, 130, IS7- 
Nitrate, beds in Chile, 43, 44. 
Nobrega, 16, 118, 119. 
Normal Schools, 85, 87, 90, 94. 96, 

100. 
Nunez, treason of, 60. 



Oakenfull, quoted, 18. 

O Estado de Sao Paulo, leading news- 
paper in Sao Paulo, 107, 108. 

Ojeda, 9. 

Oriental, Churches, missions to, 227- 
229; civilization in South Amer- 
ica, 3. 

Oruco, 103. 

Oruro, SI. 

Palacio, General Vincente Riva, 
quoted, 123. 

Palmer, Frederick, quoted, 159. 

Panama, 13, 14, 20; first colony, 
9; resources, 64; United States of 
America and Panama, 65. 

Pan-American Union, 33; quoted, 
footnote, 49. 

Papal btill, 114. 

Para, 206. 

Paraguay, 11, 14, 41, 47, 48, 51, 115; 
Church in, 203; education, 104, 
108, no; general description, 49; 
immigration, 71; illegitimacy, 76; 
Indians, 198-200; Jesuits, 120; mis- 
sions in, 223; population, 50; re- 
sources, 50-51; settlement, 11; 
size, 34; trade, 48. 

Parana, 121, 176, 177, 187, 225. 

Patagonia, 43, 200-202. 

Patriots, quoted, 23, 25, 26. 

Patrizi, C. Cardinal, quoted, 239. 

Paulistas, 8, 119. 120. 

Paul III., bull of, 116, 121. 

Penna, 176, 178. 

Penzotti, imprisoned, I34- 

Pepper, Charles M., quoted, 164. 

Pernambuco, 8, 42, 66, 93. 118. 

Persia, 44, 48, 228, 229; compared 
with Colombia, 56. 

Peru, 7, 13, 14, 20, 22, 52, 142; char- 
acter and condition, 55; Church in, 
116, 117, 125, 176; education, 95-98, 
106, 107, no; effects of conquest, 
18, 19; general description, 53-55; 
immigration, 71; independence, 27, 
28; Indians, 210-212, 215, 216; 



268 



INDEX 



Inquisition, 122, 132; missions in, 
218, 223; occupation of, 9, 10; re- 
ligious liberty, 134; size; 34; vice- 
royalty, 13. 

Phelan, Father, quoted, 140, 142. 

Pichincha, battle of, 28. 

Pinedo, Dr. Federico, quoted, 237. 

Pinzon, 7. 

Pius IX., encyclical of, 131; letter to 
Maximilian, 130. 

Pizarro, 5, 9,10, 13, 114, 115, 194, 
210. 

Plenary Cotmcil of Bishops, quoted, 
78, 79. 

Political, consciousness, 13; ideals, 15; 
inheritance of South American re- 
publics, 29-32. 

Pond, Mrs. T. S., quoted, 234. 

Population, barrier to, 20; comparison 
with other countries, 33, 34; growth, 
33. 35, 38; illegitimate, 76-78, 250; 
in cities, 66; in schools, 107, 108, 
no, in; see also, under various 
republics. 

Portuguese, 7. 12, iS. 16, 17, 19, 40, 
113- 

Posadas, dictator, 27. 

Potosi, 18, 103. 

Pratt, Rev. H. B., 222. 

Presbyterians, 61, 133, 221, 222, 235. 

Prescott, quoted, 4. 

Priesthood, 125, 153-167, 179, 181, 
190-194. 234. 235- 

Priests, 16, 38, 58, 74. 115. 133. 148, 
152, ISS. 162, 165, 168, 183, 218, 
240; quoted, 38, 77, 78, 187-189, 
190-194. 

Primary instruction, 85, 86, 87, 89, 
91,94,95,96,101,102,103.106. 

Printing, 12, 13, 147; first book, 117. 

Protestant missions, 38, 41, 142, 143, 
144, 147, 148, 149, 217-256; atti- 
tude of, 252-256; history of, 217- 
222; legitimacj'- of, 227, 229-249, 
relation to Roman Catholic Church, 
249-252; schools and colleges, 223, 
224; success of, 225, 226. 



Punishments, 25. 
Punta Arenas, 44, 201. 

Quesada, 9. 

Quichuas, 7, 117, 208, 209. 210, 212, 

214, 215. 
Quito, 10, 14, 56, 66, loi, 117, 179. 

Races, 3, 5, 16, 40, 52. 

Racial stocks, 7. 

Railroads, 35, 36, 44, 46, 52, 57, 58, 70. 

Rainfall, 44, 51, 54. 

Religion, and politics, 174-178; of 
masses, 181-182. 

Religious liberty, 126-140. 

Report on Trade Conditions, quoted, 
S3. 55- 

Revallo, Father, 77. 

Reville, Dr. Albert, quoted, 117. 

Revolution, causes of, 22; defense of, 
32; French, 23; United States, 23. 

Reyes, 60, 213; automobile road, 57. 

Ricardo, 117. 

Rio de Janeiro, 8, 12, 13, 42, 91, 133, 
152, 167, 176, 188. 

Rio de la Plata, 11, 222. 

Rio Grande do Sul, 40, 42, 46, 91. 92, 
184. 

Roca, President, 231. 

Rochester Student Volimteer Con- 
vention, 93, 165. 

Roman Catholic Church, 84; claim to 
South America, 141-145; domina- 
tion in Colombia, 61; founding and 
development, 1 13-126; hold on 
people, 127; in Buenos Aires, 38; 
influence of, 55. ii7; Influence on 
education, 93, 99, 147; responsi- 
bility of, 145; strength and weak- 
ness in South America, I79-I9S- 

Romero, Bishop, 24, 177. 

Rowe, Prof. L. S., quoted, 8s. 86, 88, 
105, 106. 

Russia, 12. 

Saavedra, Canon Jos6, Catechismr 

171; quoted, 240. 
San Estaneslao, Indians of, I99> 



INDEX 



269 



Sanitation and hygiene, 45, 67, 

San Marcos, University of, 97. 

San Martin, 27, 28, 194. 

Santa Cruz, 8, 103. 

Santiago, 44, 45, 46, 66, 116, 133. I34. 
166, 167; Catholic University, 90. 

Sao Paulo, 8, 40, 42, 46, 66, 185, 224; 
American influence on education, 
91, 92; growth, 71; Jesuits in, Ii8t 
119. 

Sao Vincento, first colony of Brazil, 8. 

Sarmiento, 82, 85, 88, 231, 

Satolli, Cardinal, quoted, 188. 

Scruggs, Hon. W. L., 148; quoted, 147. 

Seaman's Friend Society, 220. 

Secondary Schools, 86, 87, 88, 90, 96, 
100, loi, 102, 103. 

Senor Bravo, quoted, 67. 

Sheep, lands in Chile, 44. 

Sherman, Father, quoted, 185, 255. 

Simonton, Rev. A. G., quoted, 221. 

Slavery, 12, 16, 39. 121, 196. 

South American Journal, quoted, 255. 

South American Missionary Society, 
198, 201, 202, 219, 223. 

South American republics, character 
of, 29; devotion to liberty, 32; dif- 
ficulties, 31; government, 30, 31; 
revolutions in, 32. 

Southern Baptist Mission, 221. 

Southern Presbyterian Church, 221. 

Spain, 9. 12; abuses of, 20. 

Spaniards, 9, 11, 14, 20, 21, 26, 47, 
65, 71. 

Spanish, benefits of occupation, 17; 
colonial government, 19; conquest, 
4; cruelty of ministers, 25; explor- 
ers, 11; language, 14; power lost in 
Ecuador, 28. 

Spears, John R., quoted, 158. 

" Statesman's Year Book," quoted' 
91, 102, 108, 198. 

Students, ability of, 105; attitude to- 
ward Church and religion, 93, 94; 
impurity of, 80; morality and re- 
ligion, 87, 88, 146. 

Sucre, work of, 28, 103. 



Sugar trade, 8. 
Sunday Schools, 149. 

Tables, 58; areas and population, 63. 
exports and imports, 50; Indian 
population, 215; legitimate popula- 
tion, 77; population, 34; reUgious 
census, 141 ; statistics of missionary 
work, 223. 

Tarija, 103. 

Taxation, 12, 46, 68, 89, 128; of re- 
ligious orders, 128. 

Thome de Souza, 12, 118. 

Thomson, James, 222. 

Tierra del Fuego, 43, 201, 219, 220. 

Titacaca, Lake, 3. 5 1. 119. 

Tordesillas, Treaty of, 12. 

Toribio, Archbishop, 116, 117. 

Trade, 14, 19-20, 21, 41, 68, 69, 70. 

Training of^teachers, 106. 

Trujillo, 96. 

Trumbull, David, 243, 244. 

Tucker, Mr., quoted, 151. 

Tucuman, 4, 14. 

Turner, Mrs., quoted, 210. 

United States, 12, 31, 36, 37, 48, 56, 
59. 6s, 75. 86, 90, 145. I77, 181, 
184; education compared, 107-111; 
size, 34; trade, 69; trade with 
Brazil, 41; trade with Latin Am- 
erica, 69. 

Universidad RepubUcana, 100. 

University of Montevideo, Professor, 
quoted, 143. 

Universities, 87, 90, 91, 94, 96, 97, 99, 
loi, 102, 103, 104; expenses of, iii. 

Uruguay, 49, 50, 72; Church in, 139; 
education, 94, 108, no; general de- 
scription, 46-47; government, 31; 
Indians, 198, 203; Jesuits, 120; 
missions in, 222, 223; population 
and products, 47; settlement, 11; 
size, 34- 

Valdivia, 10, 43, 44, 116, 194, 202, 210. 
Valparaiso, 27, 44, 45; pioneer mis- 
sions in, 243. 



270 



INDEX 



Vaughan, Cardinal, quoted, 158, 17S. 
255. 

Venezuela, 13, 14, 22, 27, 41, 53, 60; 
backwardness, 70; conquest, 19; 
education, 102, no; government, 
31; immigration, 71; independence, 
24, 25; missions in, 223; religion in, 
139. 147; resources, 63, 64; size, 34. 

Vespucci, Amerigo, 7. 

Villaran, Dr., quoted, 97 » 98. 



Warner, J. H., quoted, 93, 105. 

Wenberg, Mr., 215. 

Wheat, 35. 37- 

Wilcox, Marrion, quoted, 93, 104, lOS, 

Women, 15, 16, 25, 47, 59, 157, 160; 

defense of, 76; education of, 106. 
Wood, Rev. T. B., quoted, 136, 212, 

213. 
World Atlas of Christian Missions, 

quoted, 223. 



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